


The learning curve of a screwball

by Cuits



Series: The sweetest swing in baseball [1]
Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, MIKE LAWSON HUMAN DISASTER, Slow Burn, not after 104
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:27:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8856196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuits/pseuds/Cuits
Summary: "I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
   The fault in our stars. - John Green





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gdgdbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/gifts).



> I started to write this before most of event that are canon now so for all intents and purposes Mike's mom is indonesian.

**-533 days**

Okay, so he doesn’t get it.

That is just the way it is. True, he has made sacrifices and worked hard to achieve what he has achieved, and Mike could even argue under the right circumstances that everything he has it’s a byproduct of his talent and his efforts and that he doesn’t owe anything to anybody. 

Except that he owes a lot of things to a lot of people — to a lot of women, actually — and maybe he married a hardcore feminist by chance and the marriage didn’t last enough, but the constant education on privilege surely stuck with him.

So, even though he might be tempted to say that he gets it from time to time, he’s not dumb enough to actually believe that he does. He is an almost middle-aged, white-looking, heterosexual male in a world where that precise combination grants you the extra wind under your wings and for some reason, the image of his tiny, Indonesian mother — who didn't know absolute anything about baseball — taking him to trainings and games while working two jobs, supporting him like a force of nature, keeps popping into his head. 

Come to think of it, maybe the fact that his ex-wife was such a vocal advocate of feminism wasn’t by chance at all.

Anyway, let’s say that while he is not absolutely ignorant about the issue, he most certainly couldn’t possibly say that he knows what it entails to be a young, black woman wanting to get into professional baseball. He would bet that it took quite a lot, though. As in _it-took humanity-quite-a-lot-to-set-foot-on-the-moon_ quite a lot.

The kind of _quite a lot_ that people write books about, and make cheesy films in which everything ends up having a happy ending… that sort of thing, right? So for the life of him that he can’t figure out what her “designer of choice” might have to do with… well, anything.

“And what kind of beauty regime do you follow?”

Besides him, Ginny takes a deeper breath and Mike can feel the accumulated tension of question after stupid question of this hellish interview starting to take a toll on both of them, because he might won’t get it but he understand far more than the moronic prick that prides himself in being a journalist of shorts.

Ginny forces a polite, contained and completely fake smile as she tries to navigate questions with far more grace than Mike could have thought possible for any human being not currently working in politics.

“I train as hard as I can. It certainly counts as a regime although I’m not so sure about the beauty part.”

For the unmptenth time in the last fiveteen minutes Mike changes his position in his chair trying to find the magical spot that would make this club’s publicity stunt bearable. He crosses his fingers over his lap, his right calf over his left knee, then uncrosses his fingers and takes a deep breath, uses one of his hands to scratch his beard, puts his right foot on the floor keeping his knees apart, leans on the back of the chair, crosses his arms over his chest, sits straighter.

“So what about children? Have you thought about how your professional life will impact in your family life?”

In his peripheral vision field Ginny grabs the edge of the seat with such a force that he is momentarily worried that she might break something. Probably the chair. And that it’s just the final straw on the proverbial camel's back because never in his entire life has Mike been simultaneously so embarrassed by and on behalf of the same person. And gender. Whatever.

“You know what, _Ted_?” he pronounces his name like it was one of those pretentious names celebrities like to impose on their progenie, like Northwest, or Pineapple. _Ted_. “I sincerely think is time we start to talk about me,” he says, a practiced, arrogant smile on his face but there is nothing amiable about his stance. “I’m the real diva of this team, do you want to know all about my beauty regime?”

By some miracle attributable to God himself, the interviewer is still alive and intact by the time the both of them walk out of the room. The hallway is deserted, they are both in street clothes as requested for the interview and without the need to follow their stated routine of dragging their feet while bantering all the way to the locker rooms they seem to get suspended on a moment of awkwardness.

“So, do you want to go and grab a beer? Celebrate that the worst interview in the history of baseball is over?”

It’s a peace offering of sorts, although he is not sure what he is trying to apologize for, or on whose behalf.

She shrugs. “As long as I don’t have to hear again that disgusting list of ingredients of your beauty regime shake.”

“Hey, don’t criticize my rise-and-shine-you-are-the-most-handsome-in-the-kingdom shake. Time doesn’t stop for anyone and one day you will want to be as beautiful as I am.”

She snorts and bumps into him as they start slowly walking towards the exit. He looks at her with his hands inside the front pockets of his jeans and sees that she is really smiling, with dimples and everything, as if she hadn’t just undergone one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing set of questions in professional sports.

It baffles him. It makes him wonder what other obnoxious things she has had to endure to become this Ginny Baker that fights and falls and conquers and smiles.

He bumps right back into her.

As they keep walking in a slow, steady pace, their arms brushing occasionally with the unequal rhythms of their steps, she turns her head to look at him for half a minute before speaking out.

“Thank you.” 

“What for?”

She keeps looking intently at him, feels the weight of her gaze on him so he has to turn and look back at her. 

“You know what for,” she says, her tone not admitting discussion.

He wants to say that he would have done it for any other team member, except maybe for Duarte because he can be a real pain in the ass. It’s his duty as captain, to protect the team and call them on their shit, like a glorified nanny in compression pants. The words are about to leave his mouth when he presses his lips together and nods. Writing down the list of things that he doesn’t get would probably take him the rest of his life but the look Baker is giving him? _That_ is a thing he gets.

The shup-up-and-let-me-do-this look.

Yes, he gets that look.

The hallway is coming to an end. He makes a noncommittal gesture and opens the door for her to go through it first. 

“First round is on you, Rookie.”

 

**-416 days**

The team is in Tucson of all places when he hurts his back again. His abused lumbar muscles contract in the most painful way and punish him for his stupidity with every single steps he takes. 

“Come on, old man, we are almost there.” Ginny helps him walk the incredibly long hallway of the hotel as he tries hard not to wince every time one of his legs moves. “You are lucky we don’t have a game tomorrow.”

He groans just thinking about getting into compression pants, not to mention the picking up a bat or the actual running part. “I don’t think I can consider myself lucky right now.”

“You are right. I think dumb is far more appropriate.”

This time the groan comes out sounding almost like a whine but he doesn’t have the heart or the energy to argue with her. Mostly because she is right but also because he wishes he hadn’t hurt himself in such a completely embarrassing way.

“The important thing is that I won,” he says with a conviction he is completely facking.

“Really? Cause I’m pretty sure that your back agrees with me that it is not the important thing.” 

The door of his room is finally on sight which means that, at their current pace they will arrive there at some point in the next five hours. He sighs and leans a little more heavily on her. 

She doesn’t even flinch. Some days he is sure she could lift him up easily like some kind of superwoman, defying all sense of logic and her smaller frame because that is the kind of thing his pitcher does. Defy and win.

And stop bullets with that no-nonsense look. Possibly.

“Come on, Baker. He _dared_ me, what could I do?”

“I’d say not doing it would have been on the right path.”

Yes, sure. The new, shiny, young, _handsome_ catcher of the team dares him to bench press and he is supposed to act all mature and self-assured about his value and masculinity and pass.

Right.

“You say that now, in my downfall, but you have to admit that my stupid display of superior strength has been quite impressive.”

He keeps dragging his feet until the door of his room materializes in front of them and Ginny pushes him against the wall to liberate herself from his weight as she works the lock open.

“Yep, your stupidity has been quite impressive.” She keeps the door open with her foot and maneuvers herself under his arm to help him get into his room. “You better be back on your feet for our next game or I’m publicly blaming you for any bad call I might make.”

He smiles and winces as he lets his weight fall dead onto the little couch of the room. 

“Ouch, ouch, ouch.”

Ginny looks at him with a chastising look and a daring smile, her hands on her hips as she seems to contemplate if he is deserving of her pity at all. 

His back keeps hurting as hell and he sees now that sitting on the couch might have been not such a good idea. He tries to move, to find a better position but all attempts are soon aborted by a stabbing muscular pain.

Ginny chuckles and turns to go out of the room leaving the door open behind her. 

For a moment he is dumbstruck about how he is supposed to achieve the obvious titanic chore of closing the door of his own bedroom and — well, survive the night in general, when Ginny re-enters the room with a bag in her hand, this time closing the door after her.

“I thought you had forsaken your captain in his hour of need.”

She rolls her eyes, leaves the bag on the floor and goes to him with the apparent obvious intent to help him stand up.

“Please, don’t talk about yourself in the third person. You have done enough damage to your reputation today as it is.”

She puts her arms under his in an awkward embrace and flexes her knees to outbalance his weight and give him impulse to stand up, which frankly is far more mechanical an unglamorous than it already sounds, but Mike is struck with a sudden wave of deep affection for this warm, kind, mythologically strong woman that seems really invested in his well being.

“If you wanted a hug you could have just asked.”

“Would you shut up if I just ask?” she says with an elevated eyebrow and a sideway smile on her face.

She gives a step back when he is standing straight, if the term straight is used loosely, and offers him her hands.

“Now sit on the floor. Come on, I’ll help you.”

Mike has a bad feeling about this, starting with the fact that the floor seems to be almost unreachable and following with the certainty that won't be able to get up from there ever again without the employment of heavy machinery or black magic.

“I was just now sitting on the couch,” he says pointing at the offended piece of furniture.”And it wasn’t that good. In fact it was terrible, so I don't see how the floor could be any better.”

She takes his hands, grabbing them firmly, while she huffs impatiently. “Trust me,” she says, which for all effects and purposes are like the magic words to open Alibaba’s cave. He grabs her hands back and takes a deep breath as he prepares himself to endure extraordinary pain for the next couple of minutes.

“Okay.”

Once again she flexes her knees and uses the balance of her body weight to leverage his and as Mike descends to the floor both faster and slower than he would like he can’t shake the idea that at any moment now, she is going to lose her balance and end up on top of him on the floor, most probably breaking his ass and his nose in the process.

The whole process ends up being less painful and less eventful than he had anticipated. 

“Now what?”

She silently goes to her bag and produces an electric heating pad. “Put this on your back and lay down with your legs up on the couch as I plug it in.”

He does as she says, carefully, with the slow movements of a ninety year old person, trying to whine and hiss as little as possible in the process. A minute later she materializes at his side and sits on the floor beside him before taking the same position as him.

“Better?” she asks turning her head to look at him instead of the ceiling and putting a medium sized paper bag full of licorice between them.

“Actually, yes,” he says surprised that this little trick seems to be working. The pad warms up and he inhales deeply as he can feel the muscles of his lower back slowly relaxing from their angry state.

He takes a piece of the candy and pops it into his mouth. 

“Does your back give you problems often?” he asks before swallowing the candy.

She laughs softly, curls everywhere scattered on the floor and dimples. “Menstrual cramps can be a bitch,” she says. He is just a little embarrassed to not have figured that one out earlier. “I am obviously not as ancient as you are,” she finishes.

“Obviously.”

He _is_ old. He _feels_ old, in a way that has little to do with sport injuries. He feels melancholic for things he doesn’t have, for moments like this, absent in his regular life. His marriage wasn’t perfect, not by far, but he finds he misses having someone to love unguardedly, someone that sees the person behind the Padres uniform and still stands by him.

He craves for a sense of belonging and intimacy like only people who have lived enough can understand.

“This is a lonely life,” he says, barely more than a whisper. The room is silent but for the sound of creased paper every time that either of them go for another piece of candy, and if he concentrates on the ceiling hard enough he can maybe forget he has said the words out loud.

“Yeah,” Ginny says after a pause. Her voice very, very soft.

Yeah. He figures she would be one to know, far from her family and constantly harassed by the press, all in a work environment that resists to make things a little less difficult for her. He wonders if she misses these kind of moments too, or when was the last time that someone took the time to comfort her when she was not feeling great.

The warmth spreads along his back, all his muscles relaxing, not only the ones at his back and he closes his eyes and doesn’t ask for some human contact, a caress, a light touch, a hand in his — but boy, does he wish for it.

There is an imposing knock on the door and the next thing Mike sees when he opens his eyes is Blip, upside down, looking at them with suspicious eyes.

Mike blinks twice.

“I know what this is,” he says pointing an accusatory finger at the both of them alternatively. “Some of us have been seeing this coming for some time now. It was clearly meant to be.” Mike is about to ask what the hell is he talking about when he crosses his arms over his chest. “Your cycles have finally synced up.”

Mike chuckles. A piece of candy hits Blip square on the forehead.

“So what’s up? I came here to join the celebration.”

Mike makes an inviting gesture with his hand. “Feel free to join in.”

Ginny is surprisingly quiet while Blip turns the TV on, setting it on a sports channel and loots the minibar so Mike turns his head to look at her. She looks absorbed, looking at the ceiling with a placid sort of face as she chews on some licorize. Her fingers playing with a lock of her own hair that for some absurd reason Mike finds kind of mesmerizing.

Blip gathers the spoils of his minibar incursion consisting of three beers, M&M’s and macadamia nuts and distributes the bottles in a way that are reachable to all of them before sitting on the floor and then lying on it at Mike’s other side, limbs and little colorful bags spread in every conceivable direction.

Mike closes his eyes again, the monotonous voice of the tv sports anchor filling the room softly like a lullaby.

“This is nice,” says Blip, sounding like his mouth is completely full of chocolate or peanut butter, “but I feel like my wife would feel cheated on if she found out.”

Ginny snorts and Mike’s blank mind fills with the image of her fingers playing with her lock of hair, of general fingers caressing hair, of the memory of the feeling of lazy mornings in bed, the sun coming from the window warming his skin and fingers slowly going through his hair.

He remembers that kind of peace, he longs for it with an intensity that surprises him. “I would give literally all I have for someone to comb my hair right now,” he murmurs, he is just vaguely aware of having said it out loud, his words surely lost under the baseball diatribe coming from the television.

He doesn’t mean anything by it. His body is beat and his mind can’t keep up so all his filters are off. It’s not… he doesn’t mean anything by it. The anchorman stops speaking and his voice is replaced by a repellent music theme.

Out of nowhere tentative fingers reach for his head. Slender, strong fingers running soothingly through his hair, caressing his scalp.

He takes a deep, deep breath and exhales the air of his lungs heavily. His eyes still shut, he feels more relaxed than he remembers being in quite a long time and maybe that is what makes him think in a passing way that this could be a kind of happiness he could aspire to.

 

**-351 days**

He can’t say he finds out in a completely innocent way but he could easily argue that it was pretty unintentional. 

The papers were just there, in the kitchen aisle that Mike could swear Amelia never uses for its intended purpose. Hi didn’t want to pry, his intention, actually, couldn’t have been farther away from that, he simply wakes up at unearthly hours in the morning sometimes and it has always seem to him that it is only polite to prepare breakfast when you spend the night at someone else’s house. That was all he was aiming for, nothing more, nothing less.

Well, maybe, if he is to be completely honest with himself, he wanted to be a little extra nice since this was only the second time he set foot in Amelia’s house. Amelia has very strict work ethics that include no access whatsoever to any kind of privy information of her clients, the kind of information that lies in almost every horizontal surface of her house, so Mike had set his mind to subtly thanking her for making concessions on his behalf.

But that was it.

So he had looked for a pan and a spatula in the most silent of ways and was gathering ingredients but the offending stack of papers was ostensibly in his way. All pretty normal stuff. But as he had tried to move the papers to an empty place on another piece of furniture a picture had dropped off out of a nondescript manila folder and yet Mike was very intentionally not trying to pry but he has picked up the picture to put it back and he had freezed in place.

That was almost an hour and a half ago and in that time, his completely honorable intentions had gone out of the window and moved to the North Pole. He has opened the folder and read everything that was in it at least four times, just up until the moment Amelia has appeared at the threshold with bed hair lazily dragging her feet around.

Her tentative smile disappearing the moment the scene before her eyes sets in, her whole face hardening in a moment. It’s quite a spectacle, a terribly sad one.

“You aren’t supposed to be reading that.” She closes her arms over her chest, the shinning silk robe she is wearing wrinkling around her waist.

Mike doesn’t explain himself, doesn’t give the details that leads him to the discovery of the picture, the e-mails, the demands of an absurd amount of money.. He is far, far too mad for that kind of consideration.

“Too bad.” His voice is raspy from anger and not having talked in quite some time.

“Mike–” She manages to make a single word sound like a long unfinished sentence, like a warning.

“Who knows about this?”

Amelia chuckles and makes a dismissive movement with her head, as if his insistence was the greater aggravation of the whole deal.

“Mike, this is not your business.”

To her credit she says it like she really means it, which incidentally only serves to fuel his indignation furthermore as he takes a step towards her.

“The hell it isn’t.” He is categorical in this stance, although perhaps, it would have had more effect if he was wearing more clothes.

She stares at him for a couple of seconds with an absolutely impassible face making him really wish he had his trousers on just to storm out of the house without ending on the tabloids in briefs.

“Does she know?” He knows the answer already but the confirmation feels important for some reason.

“No, and she is not going to find out.” This time her words are not a warning but an obvious threat. “It’s being managed. I’m managing it.”

Mike has no doubt about that, doesn’t think for a single iota of a second that she is not going to take care of it because Amelia is nothing if not efficient, ruthless when it comes to protecting her client, and is certainly capable of inspiring the fear of God with a single bat of her eyelashes. _But_ — and it is a great but — that doesn’t mean that he can just nod and step aside and have a margarita under the sun while his rookie, a member of his team, is in this kind of trouble. Inaction would be as much a betrayal as not telling her it is a lie by omission.

“Fucking shit.”

He is eloquent that way.

He is also out of Amelia’s house in record time, his hair uncombed and striking out in every direction, his shirt wrinkled and uneven due to bad buttoning. They didn’t talk while he fished for his trousers but Mike thinks that the implication they will not be hooking up in the foreseeable future was pretty clear from the way she looked at him like a hostile disappointment. 

He takes his phone out and doesn’t check the hour before making a call to his own agent, then Al, then another couple of guys he is glad not to have the pleasure of knowing.

He doesn’t call Ginny though, doesn’t wake her up this early in the morning to tell her that there are a couple of scumbags out there with pictures of her trying to make a lot of money out of selling them to the highest bid. He tells himself that he would have called her if it wasn’t for the hour, convinces himself that it is better to tell her when the deal is done and over with, that he is giving Amelia a fair head start to talk to her client about this but the ugly, sad true is that he is far too angry to call her, far too aggravated on her behalf.

He is an obtuse guy. Sometimes. But not nearly obtuse enough not to understand that what would be a cheeky, anecdotic scandal for any other player could be a career end scandal for her, not because she is more or less deserving of it but just because she is who she is. A she.

The whole ordeal ends up being easier than he anticipated and the easy way in which Al knows exactly how to contact who and when, makes him think that their coach has been taking more bullets for the team than anybody gives him credit for.

“I don’t wanna know what is inside that envelope,” Al says entering Mike’s car and putting said envelop in the backside with a resigned tiredness, “but seeing the obscene amount of money it cost you I’ll recommend getting rid of it as soon as possible.”

Mike nods with a grave gesture.

“It’s not drugs, right?” asks the older man after a second, looking at him gravely, worried. “Because you surely look like shit and those knees has been giving you hell for quite sometime.”

Mike looks at him in the eye. “It’s not drugs.”

“Alright then.”

Al doesn’t ask any more questions which suits him just fine since he doesn’t have any more answers. They remain mercifully silent for the rest of the ride. 

He goes home, takes the longest shower he can remember. The water almost scalding the skin of his back as he stands under the spray, his hands pressed against the cooler tiles of the wall until he grows impatient and the shower cabin starts to feel claustrophobic.

When he passes the towel over the mirror to clean the steam away, his reflection looks almost too tired for words, with dark bags under his red eyes and the untrimmed, dripping beard. It’s like looking ten years into the future, or maybe three years into the past, when he first separated from Rachel.

He dresses and goes to the kitchen to have a cup of much deserved coffee and tries to ignore the accusatory presence of the white envelope on the counter. He hasn’t looked inside except to check that he was getting what he has bought: a hard print copy of the pictures and a memory stick.

His coffee tastes unusually bitter.

He hasn’t called Ginny yet, mostly because he doesn’t know what to say. The words “Hey, I got your nudes,” hardly classify as an icebreaker. If Hallmark made cards with the message “I'm sorry the world is filled with so many assholes. Here are the private pictures that were stolen from you,” he could buy one, mail it with the envelope and be done with it.

He is half done with his second cup of coffee when he decides to man up, picks up the damn envelope and his car keys and heads out of the house with a determination that is only half faked.

He knows that Amelia has talked to her the moment Ginny opens the door of her hotel room, her distress obviously displayed in her red puffy eyes, exhaustion written down on her whole stance. She doesn’t utter a word, just looks at him for a couple of seconds and then steps to the side making a silent gesture with her hand and inviting him hin.

His heart breaks a little at the resignation in her eyes, short-circuits something inside of him and the careful, sensible speech he has prepared on his way disappears from his mind giving pace to a low key irritation with things beyond his reach.

“Here,” he says without preamble, extending his arm towards her with the envelope in his hand. “These are yours.”

She takes the envelope first confused, then surprised when she opens it. Mike puts his hands inside the front pockets of his trousers and soundly takes a deep breath.

“Have you seen them?”

“Kind of,” he answers truthfully. “Just to check.”

She nods, aseptically absorbing the information. She seems to rebuilt from that nod. Relief washing away her previous weariness, her whole persona looks suddenly as ready to take the world and ride it as ever. He is insanely glad that she is not trying to explain herself. The mere thought that Ginny would attempt to justify her private life choices to him of all people feels wrong, and stupid and revolting.

She is the aggravated part, by his book she has done nothing wrong. She has done nothing he hasn’t done.

“Do you want a beer or something?” Ginny asks more relaxed that she was some minutes ago.

They are still in the hallway near the door. Mike is so goddamn tired of this whole pile of shit that he is tempted to accept the offer if only to have an excuse to stay a while and sit on the couch for a few minutes but he doesn’t think his stomach could take it. It is probably too early to start drinking by any sane person’s standards.

“I’m going to pass. I think I’m going to go and try to catch some extra sleep for a change.”

She smiles, brightly. “You truly are old.” But she takes a step forward and then another and before he has time to register what is happening her arms are round his waist, her head resting on the crook of his neck.

She doesn't say the words, doesn’t speak out her gratitude but he hears it nevertheless, his own arms enveloping her almost as a reflex in an embrace that should be a little awkward but isn’t. It’s comfortable and nice. It feels a little like hitting a home run in the last inning.

It’s better than nice.

Mike rubs lightly her back meant as a comforting gesture. 

Then he kisses the top of her head and he has no idea what he means by that.

 

**-242 days**

Mike doesn’t _hate_ black tie charity events as much as people think he does, mainly because they give him an excuse to dress up like James Bond and play along with the idea that if he weren’t a professional baseball player he could totally have been a badass, international spy.

The fancy open bars and beautiful women in slinky dresses don’t hurt either.

He arrives early at the event. Black tuxedo, trimmed beard and the San Diego Padres’ cufflinks that he might or might not pretend are secret mini-explosive or super comms. He walks the room with a big, suave smile and his casual flirtation mode on. That is what is expected of him, to charm as many checks out of potential donors as possible and if he does it impersonating Sean Connery in “From Russia with Love”, well, that is for nobody else to know and for him not to tell.

“You look dashing,” Amelia says, materializing out of nowhere with a little polite smile on her lips that means business.

“You look quite stunning yourself.” She is wrapped in a elegant, electric blue, backless dress that makes him want to put his hand at the base of her nape and run it down until his fingers encounter fabric.

She looks at him like she is reading his mind and her smile broadens. He misses this, misses making her laugh and relax — sometimes he misses it enough to forget the other not so nice, complicated things between them.

“We are not going to have sex,” she says very firmly, still smiling as if the situation is all too funny but improper to laugh at.

He shrugs. 

“You look stunning nevertheless.”

There is a little commotion over the entrance and Mike and Amelia look at each other for a second more before she goes because they both have been around long enough to know what the fuss is about. Ginny Baker has arrived and they both have their parts to play in the media circus.

It’s a little bit too relatable to what their relationship has been for Mike’s taste, so he makes a _distinguished_ beeline for the bar and gives himself a break.

“A vodka martini, shaken not stirred,” he says in a theatrical deep voice to the bartender, a young, blonde girl that looks barely legal under the heavy, smoke-ish make-up. 

“I’m not sure I know the difference,” she says, her words practically purring out of her mouth as she pouts. _Jesus Christ_. She is probably entirely too young to understand the reference so Mike smiles with indulgence. “It’s okay, just put both things together in a fancy glass.”

She giggles and starts to prepare the drink with deliberate, slow movements specially designed to show him as much cleavage as humanly possible, giving him _looks_ from under impossibly long eyelashes that could start a tornado if batted in the right way.

She looks way, way too young for any of that. Way, way, way too young to be insinuating herself to him anyway, and it makes him feel slightly uncomfortable. More accurately, it makes him feel like an old, perverted asshole.

He takes his drink with a tight smile and loses the napkin with her telephone number. He wonders if these things used to be funnier before or if the desire to forget his failed marriage while maybe spiting his ex had overrode any kind of criteria or standards he might have had.

He salutes Shrek as he passes by with a friendly pat on the shoulder and stops for pleasantries with Sony’s wife before reaching Blip and Evelyn.

“Evelyn,“ he salutes kissing her knuckles with a daring wink. “You look gorgeous.”

She rolls her eyes but smiles with indulgence because she is been around for far too long not to know the game. “And you look handsome. Not as handsome as my husband, though.”

Mike take a ship from his fancy glass and looks at Blip with feign arrogance. “Your taste in men has always been your only flaw, _dear_.”

“ _Dear_? Really?” asks Blip offended probably for all the wrong reasons. “Are you pretending to be James Bond again?”

Mike looks at him nonplussed. “Are you pretending to be Bruce Wayne again?”

Blip blinks at him once, twice, he puts his hand in his trousers front pockets. 

“I won't’ confirm neither deny anything. But Gotham is a safer city with me.”

They both nod at each other solemnly as if their faked secret identities were sealing a non-disclosure agreement.

Watching Baker make it through the crowd is painfully exhausting. It’s not their first event together and it’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time wherever she goes. Still, as she poses for what must be the hundredth selfie of the night with a plastered smile, Mike forces himself to look elsewhere.

“At that pace, it’s going to take her half the night to reach the bar,” Blip says, changing the weight of his body from one leg to the other, obviously uncomfortable. “And if I were her, boy would I need to reach that bar.”

Mike huffs. Not after debating with himself and reaching any kind of internal conclusion, he just huffs. She is wearing make-up, her hair done up and a bright orange dress that could pass for modest if it wasn’t for the v-shaped cleavage. She talks back, she poses, she signs napkins and tries to move along the room and it is excruciating to watch. Her shoulders are tense, her smile is completely fake and she is fidgeting with her thumbs which is Baker’s code for wanting to get the hell out. He can’t blame her. He remembers being twenty something and not knowing how to find his own ass with both hands, much less, how to navigate a crowd of entitled people who think you owe them something.

Mike leaves the fancy drink he is not drinking anyway and makes his way to her because he is a nice guy sometimes and he did go to Sunday school almost a lifetime ago. He is pretty sure that Jesus had said something about not letting thy neighbour suffer at the hands of the groupies.

She looks at him getting nearer and her whole posture relaxes, her smile gets a little bit broader but still is fake as hell and Mike nods very slightly to make her know that he has gotten her distress call.

This is what being a good pitcher to a good catcher can do to a person. He bets it would make them great at playing charades, too.

He turns up his charm, makes some vague excuse about needing his rock star pitcher elsewhere before putting his hand at the small of her back and leading her to the dancefloor. He puts his left hand on her waist and extends his right arm making an impatient gesture for her to take his free hand.

“Really?” she says with disbelief but takes his hand anyway.

“I thought you liked to dance.”

She puts her other hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, music from this century.”

Mike snorts un-elegantly. “Frank Sinatra is timeless.” He takes a dissimulate look around, sees a couple of flashes go off and mentally calculates the appropriate distance to keep between their bodies as they move slowly around. “Besides, this and the bathroom are the only places that would grant you a five minute break, and I was not going to walk you to the ladies. The floor tiles there are really slippery. I could hurt myself.”

She smiles, for real this time, dimples and everything and Mike breathes a little easier. He swings them easily among the other couples on the dancefloor. She is surprisingly easy to lead around for a person that is remarkably stubborn on the mount.

“You are good at this,” she says, more appreciatively than surprised.

“Of course I am. I am excellent at this.” He makes turn around before catching her again. “The first thing I’m going to do when I retire is winning ‘Dancing with the Stars’.”

Her smiles falters and she looks away. It’s not the first time he has come to notice that she usually does that when he talks about retirement. It’s kind of endearing, really, but he is getting too old for this game and she needs to start trusting that she is ready to leave the training wheels behind.

“Come on, Baker, we both know that my knees are not going to take it for much longer and then you’ll have to settle for a younger, surely less attractive catcher.”

“It’s not that,” she says softly, but she says it like an afterthought to herself, and she looks suddenly worried, as if she just spoke of a secret never meant to be heard by anyone other than herself.

He moves the hand on her waist to cover the small of her back, spread, climbing like a vine over her dress, and pushes her a little closer to him, flashes and lookers be damned. The song ends and another one begins without either of them making any move to end their dance, and their cheeks are now so close together that Mike can whisper in her ear without having to miss a step.

“What is it?”

“I… I don’t have that many people.” He can barely hear her over the music despite the close distance between them. “Everybody ends up going away.” Her voice breaks a little.

He is a jerk. Mainly because as she pours out her fears, he is thinking how it all relates to _him_. He has the game, and his teammates. He has his elderly mother back in his home state and he has Ginny, and when he retires he will have to cut off half of that list. He is also a jerk because he pushes her closer to him until her chest bumps into his and the air in her lungs comes out rushed in a surprised gasp.

It tightens something inside himself, that gasp. It makes his heart skip a weak beat.

“I am not going away, Baker.” He wants to make a promise, to say something meaningful and definitive but all that comes to mind sounds too cliché to be sincere, so he makes her spin outwards and then inwards into his arms again, making a point of grabbing her a little bit harder than before.

 

**-187 days**

It’s late at night when the bus team starts the trip back from Los Angeles. The pitch black darkness outside makes mirrors out of the bus windows but it is still early to dim the inside lights. Mike tries to look at the landscape but all he can see is his own reflection, tired and defeated so he looks away and plugs his headphones in, shuffling through the radio channels in search for a distraction.

“— so I’m very glad to be a part of a great team.”

He voice comes so clear that he automatically turns to check that she is still by his side on the bus, with her own headphones on and following the rhythm of the music she is listening to with her head and not in a forsaken radio station in San Diego. It takes him a couple of seconds to remember that she said something about an interview for a canned show a couple of days ago.

He closes his eyes and hears her talk about the Minors, about her pass through the AAA without really listening. The sound of her voice is like white noise, like a lullaby. His mind drifts away without getting to fall asleep in a weird state of night-bus-Nirvana for the better part of half an hour until a long pause in the conversation makes him pay attention.

“Come on,” the interviewer coaxes, “you have been playing baseball your whole life, you had to have a favourite player growing up.”

“Ahmmm,” she sounds like she is smiling. “I guess you could say I looked up to Mike Lawson.”

“Really? It must have been quite something when—”

He doesn't hear the rest of the sentence as he pulls his headphones off and makes a point to look at Baker with a sardonic smile. He has been waiting for this moment for quite sometime.

It takes twelve long seconds before she exhales soundly and takes her own headphones off before looking at him annoyed.

“What?” It sounds more like a demand than like a question.

“I was listening to your radio interview and you totally had my poster on your wall.”

She rolls her eyes. “So I did, so what?”

She crosses her arms over her chest, defensive, her whole façade hard as concrete with a deadly stare that he is sure had made wiser men run away in the other direction. It’s an act. He is almost completely sure that it is an act for him to drop the topic.

Maybe if he didn’t knew her as well as he does. Maybe if he was indeed a wiser man. 

“Don’t be embarrassed, Baker I was the prettiest rookie back in the day,” he says with exuberant confidence. “I would have put my own poster on the wall too if I was a straight teenage girl.”

She covers her face with one hand and tries to hide her minimal smile,

“It was a inspirational thing, okay?” she says mortified, a little exasperated, too. “Mainly I wanted to be _like_ you.”

“The beard wouldn’t suit you.” 

“It doesn’t suit you either.”

Mike half-chuckles half-laughs. The sound echoes inside the bus and a couple of their teammates and Al look at him suspiciously before going back to minding their own business.

“The beard is the trade of a distinguished captain.”

She leans on, drops her voice to talk in confidence. “You do realize you are not a pirate, right?”

The light inside the bus dims, the silence falling upon them like a comfortable blanket and it taints it all of irreality. It makes him yearn for things unnamed, for this bubble of easy-going intimacy that he is sure would burst as soon as he retires.

Mike takes her hand and she immediately entangles her fingers with his like a well learned routine. He will retire, sooner more probable than later, and she’ll keep on growing, reaching new heights, collecting milestones as if they were baseball cards.

Their paths are just crossing as she goes up and he goes down. He is old enough to recognize the inevitability of it. As he said to her he is not going anywhere but she most certainly will and he will miss her as she conquers the world.

She is history in the making and he will be a brief line in her biography but at the moment he holds her hands while she looks at him with mirth in her eyes. 

“So you _mainly_ had my poster for inspirational purposes.”

She laughs. He can swear he feels it resonating in the bones of his hand.

“Well, you were a really pretty rookie a long, long time ago, Lawson.”

 

**-63 days**

The flowers arrive to the clubhouse, bold and apologetic for everybody to see. And Mike has functioning eyes so he most definitely sees them.

Then come the stupid balloons, followed some days later by a completely ridiculous box of chocolates. Mike takes the presents from the delivery guy all those three times and crosses the locker room to Baker’s closet/changing room making a point of not reacting at all. Not a joke, not a comment, not even a quick gesture with his fucking eyebrows.

Nothing.

But later he sits on the bench and watches the guy seated on the first row of the grades very publicly smiling for the cameras and he feels the need to react in a very specific, unreasonable way.

It all feels the wrong kind of odd. Like a perfectly orchestrated publicity stunt except that the guy is like the second best tennis player in the world and Mike can’t try to open a newspaper without seeing his stupid, Spanish face advertising a watch or a cologne. It’s not like the guy is struggling at getting attention.

There is something that it’s not quite right there, he can’t put his finger on it but it’s there and it’s frustrating as hell.

“If you keep looking at the guy like that you are going to burn holes on his perfect face,” Blip says leaning on him so that he can hear him without raising his voice.

“I don’t like that guy.” Which probably is quite evident by the way he is looking at him and the tone of voice he uses, or at least enough for Al to turn to look at him and then at the grades.

“He is young, rich, handsome and a professional athlete at the top of his game,” Al says like he is explaining obvious things to children. “We all hate him.”

Salvi hits the ball and they all stand up and cheer loudly as the Padres on the field move to secure the bases. Ginny runs as if hell was falling upon her and makes it safely to the home base putting the Padres up by three on the score. There are high fives, ass slapping and an uncharacteristic pregnant silence when she sits on the bench next to Mike and he makes a conscious effort to stop gazing at the grades.

“What?” she demands, still panting from her run and the stupid asshats that they have as teammates dodge her question and look pointedly at the floor or the sky like children caught with the hand in the cookie jar.

Mike crosses his arms over the chest and rolls his eyes.

 _Asshats_.

“We were talking about your _boyfriend_ ,” says Blip singsonging the last word and Baker, God bless her, actually turns to look at him utterly confused.

“The tennis player who follows you around,” Mike clarifies pointing with his chin in the general direction of the grades and she follows the direction with her eyes until she sees him and Mike can see on her face the moment she realizes who they were all talking about.

“Oh. Yeah, no he’s just — a friend.”

 _A friend_. Dramatic pause included. Mike can recognize the wordcode for fuckbuddy from a mile away — he certainly has used and abused the term extensively enough.

“You should tell your friend to send you the flowers at home and not the clubhouse.” He is a jerk. He is an asshole and a jerk. Al turns around to look at him incredulously and Mike chooses to ignore him as well. “Hills is allergic to roses.”

He is vaguely aware that he is in the mood for a fight and the Cubs are not giving him a decent one. He feels frustrated without apparent reason or aim, an uneasiness inside his own skin that asks for blood or sweat and won’t leave him alone.

At his side, Ginny blushes, sinking lower on the bench and accepting the unjustified reprimand. “Uhm... okay.”

She says it with resignation, a little embarrassment even, and Mike’s discomfort grows until it becomes an angry flood that doesn’t make concessions, doesn’t have consideration for things like reason or sanity. Her quiet assent is like adding fuel to a fire.

They win the game — not that it has any impact on his mood. He walks to the clubhouse with his hands in fists and his blood boiling in his veins, with far too much nervous, fighting energy running through his system to just shut down and go home. He scrubs a hand over his beard and makes the decision of changing and going to the gym. He is too tired, his knees too abused to work out, but at least there there are things to puch safely there, with no one but himself to suffer the consequences of him being an insufferable jackass going through a midlife crisis or a psychotic episode of some kind.

He has had barely time to throw a couple of punches at the sandbag when she appears at the door, already changed into her after game sport gear. 

“What are you doing here, Baker?” he says it like a growl, like an accusation, like the very existence of her is offensive to his sight. He takes a deep breath and punches the bag again.

“I came to see if you were okay.”

“Peachy. Now you can go.”

She makes a face like she is ready to go to war if necessary and crosses her arms over her chest.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Lawson?”

Well, that is an excellent question and one that he would like to have the answer to because clearly, there is something that is very, very wrong with him. 

“Nothing.”

She doesn’t let it rest and he resents her for that in the same measure he resented her earlier for giving up. She walks further into the gym and he punches the bag as hard as he can, which is not much given that he is exhausted.

“So is it the flowers, the guy or what?”

“Leave it alone, Baker.”

This is driving him crazy, this conversation is going to send him straight to the looney house. He drops his gloves and turns around giving her his back to go to the water fountain, desperate to avoid her in every way possible. He feels like every time she hasn’t trusted his calls combined and multiplied by twenty, like that time she initiated a beanball war and she insisted on batting but to the third power.

“No.”

She materializes in front of him impeding his access to the fountain, which should be pissing him off big time but it isn’t, not exactly. 

He chuckles humourlessly and tries to go around her but she is everywhere. His skin itches with frustration. She is so close that he can smell the stupid coconut shampoo that she uses and feel her breathing on his face. His heart rate is still high from the exercise and it won't go down as heat radiates from every inch of him.

She squares her jaw and a jolt of electricity runs across his back and ends up in his crotch reminding him that he knows perfectly well this particular kind of frustration. Lust. A very particular, personalized lust.

He takes a deep breath and sets his chin higher in the air, all alpha male and everything, trying to intimidate her into backing down.

He really, really should know better than that.

She raises to the challenge. “Is it a big brother complex?” she takes half a step ahead, bumping her chest against his. “Are you jealous or—”

He grabs her shirt with both his hands over her shoulders and pushes her against the nearest wall and holds her there. It’s meant to be a warning, the same one he would have issued to any of the boys, except he miscalculates, forgets to block his elbows, to keep her at arm's length and ends up crushing his whole body against hers.

“I. Am. Not. Jealous,” he says in a perfectly calmed, iced voice. He chooses to ignore the part about the big brother complex since the fact that his semi-rigid cock is presently pressed against her thigh seems like a statement of its own.

She holds his gaze, with her mouth slightly open and her breathing coming out in small pants, neither helping at all.

He takes a big step backwards and releases his grip on her. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”

He takes his sports bag and takes off ignoring her voice calling his name from behind his back.

 

**-32 days**

Like a snowball down a hill, this stupid feeling inside him gains speed and mass until it becomes an avalanche impossible to tame or stop. A destructive force of nature. Pandora's box unleashed. 

And because he thinks he is mature enough to manage the situation with dignity and elegance, he insists on carrying on as if if nothing was happening except for, maybe, trying to limit his alone interactions with his female pitcher.

It is the fucking definition of hell. It’s not about the sexual attraction, he is a guy, he has been dealing with inconvenient lust for the better part of his adult life, and no matter what some jerk of a frat boy says, it is not pleasant but absolutely bearable with the right amount of solo on solo time. It’s the other _thing_ , the crush of epic proportions, what makes him feel like there is not enough oxygen in the room whenever she stands close to him, the constant desire to be near her and tell her things in a low voice for nobody else to hear, the stupid fucking need for her to look at him and smile.

He refuses to fall for a twenty five year old baseball player. Like what the fuck, no. He knows better, except that he apparently doesn’t because he is balls deep into this shit pit. Looking-at-her-contact-picture-in-his-cell-phone for no reason deep into the shit.

He focuses on the game. He _tries_ hard to focus on the game but his knees and his back and his general self protest emphatically, so his attention shifts to the pain instead and they lose their next three games in a row.

Baker corners him, literally corners him in the corridor leading to the exit of the clubhouse one day.

“What the fuck, Lawson?”

Yeah, what the fuck indeed. He has the wall against his back and there is no way that he can go past her without making their bodies collide or putting his hands on her which are things he most fervently wants to do in an assortment of different circumstances but should not do under any of them. Probably.

He sees some of the guys go by them without even giving them a single glance, like this is business as usual, and his look of desperately-needing-help goes unnoticed and unanswered.

She huffs, annoyed. “Can you at least look me in the eye?”

He looks down and when he does she is far closer than he had anticipated. His lungs seems to need more room than she is giving them.

“What. The Fuck. Lawson?” she punctuates, her anger more than evident but he is at a lost as what is he supposed to say that would make her go away and give him a goddamn break.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know!” She looks marginally as frustrated as he feels.” Anything!”

He shrugs. His arms almost touch hers and it is enough to make him have goosebumps. “It is just a bad strike.” 

It is not a bad strike, the whole team seems to be out of tune and he can’t find the way to make them work united again, possibly because it’s a difficult thing to accomplish while avoiding to spent extra time at the Petco Park.

“I am not talking about the games.”

This is seven levels of mortifying. He throws his head back and takes a deep breath before facing her again.

“Yeah, that. I am really sorry. I shouldn’t have–”

She pushes him hard against the wall, the air leaving his lungs in surprise as she gets on her tiptoes, her face millimeters away from his. She is beyond angry and he is having all the wrong feelings for all the wrong reasons.

“Fuck you, Mike.”

Yeah, yeah. Fuck him. That’s about the only thing he understands about anything anymore.

 

**0 days**

In the end, his knees make the decision for him. There is a crack and pain and a diagnosis that is far too complicated to combine with another season in the game so he confronts his fears the best he can and announces his early retirement while he can still stand straight for his statement.

He refuses the formal dinner event with cheesy toasts and tearjerking video montages, but the Club, of course, insists on throwing him a big, expensive party in a fashionable nightclub and since he is definitely going home, he decides that he might as well go big. They invite everyone who is anyone in town and pay for it with a big bright smile. There is a red carpet, a photocall, live music and a couple of champagne fountains that for some reason remind Mike of porno films made in the seventies.

Not that he has watched many of those.

Blip intercepts him after almost an hour of greeting people that he barely knows and posing and smiling for everyone and their mother. It occurs to him that he is more popular now that he is retiring than he was a year ago.

“Man, oh man,” Blip says eloquently and proceeds to embrace him, a mass of arms, and shoulders and broad back covering him, holding him strongly and Mike guffaws as he hugs him back. “The game is not going to be the same without you.”

He even sounds at the verge of tears.

“You do realize I am not dying, right?”

Blip grabs him by the nape and kisses him soundly in both cheeks. Well, Blip is not exactly his type, too happily married for his taste but Mike hugs him again and pats him on the back trying very hard not to start too early with the alcohol-induced exaltation of friendship.

“Damn, you look good, Lawson,” says Sanders as he releases his hold on him in favor of his wife’s arm.

“Yeah, you clean up nicely, “ Ginny’s voice comes from behind him, when he turns around she is already there, with a cute green dress and a bright smile he hasn’t seen directed at him in a while.

Mike wants to hold her hand and sell his soul if that is what it takes for her to keep smiling at him like that forever.

So okay. Yeah. Fuck.

“What can I say, now I have to rely solely on my looks to earn a decent living.”

He smiles back with all he has, then he remembers that he is a dumbass, and pathetic, and that not everyone in the whole damn world needs to know he has the hots for Baker. He takes a deep breath, rocks slightly on his heels and tries to act normal. He looks around and then at his shoes and keeps looking at anywhere but her like completely normal people do.

There is an almost awkward silence between the four of them which Mike would be more aware of if he weren’t too busy acting normal.

“This is a nice band,” Ginny tries, “I think is the same one that played at that Adidas event last month.”

Evelyn nods with her eyes wide in disbelief. She has the worst poker face ever known to mankind and her reaction makes him think that there might be some hidden meaning that he is not getting which is completely possible since he didn’t went to that event last month. He was far too invested in avoiding Ginny Baker to go out to fancy parties with free access to booze. 

“Yes, I guess they sound okay.”

Ginny huffs and puffs, rolling her eyes like he had just _offended_ her. “Seriously? What does a girl have to do around here to be asked to dance?”

The beat of the music is slow and jazz like. Mike looks at the dance floor, the couples are dancing close to each others in a slow pace and is dumbstruck for a moment as Blip takes a step ahead and Evelyn stops him in his tracks with a firm hand in the air. “Oh no, Baby, not you.”

“Okay,” he says not sure at all about what he is about to do, “So Baker, do you wanna dance?”

“Wow, don’t look so _eager_ ,” she says ironically as she takes his hand.

Well, at least this proves he could try the Hollywood thing with moderated success because if he has managed to sound uninterested he must be a hell of an actor. 

He puts one hand on her waist, very carefully, painfully aware of the pressure of her muscles under his fingers and offers his other hand to her but she just steps a little closer to him and puts both her arms around his neck.

Mike feels like fourth of July and drowning in sand all at once. 

It is is a nightmare and an exciting dream in a blender.

His body is extremely aware of her as he puts his other hand around her waist too, and tries against all hope to keep up with the rhythm of the music when all he can hear is the echo of his bloodrush in his own ears.

“So, that thing in the gym a couple of months ago,” her voice sounds soft, sweet even. Mike is afraid that she will tear him down and leave him forever undone. “Do you like me or what?”

It seems like such an innocent question. He has praised her without restraint on national television, he has spent hours, days, curled against her in buses and planes and uber cars, he has fiercely celebrated with her in front of the eyes of thousands of people so yes, he can safely say he likes her.

He likes bacon too.

“Yeah, sure I like you,” he says like it is exactly the same and not an evidence of this gigantic crush/affection/attraction that torments him without truce.

She entangles her fingers in the short hair of his nape, scratches ever so slightly his scalp with her nails and his lungs contract, refusing to expand or let the air enter his body again.

“But do you like me-like me?” She seems to be asking out of pure scientific interest and not to infinitely punish him for the inadequacy of his feelings, but she is doing that anyway with her big, brown eyes pinning him down to the moment.

It’s impossible to escape. He doesn't really want to either.

“Yes,” he says with resigned acceptance. He’s many things, but a coward is not one of them. “I like-you like you like you”

In for an inch, in for a mile.

She schools her features not to give up anything. It’s a marvel how she can do do that, how unbelievable unreadable she can be. Mike looks everywhere but at her for a second and tries to create some insignificant distance between them as they follow the slow beat of music. Ginny tightens her hold on him not letting him go anywhere.

“That was an “I like” you more than necessary,” she says leaning on him, her face no longer visible to him as their cheeks barely touch.

“Well, I like you a lot.” It’s meant to sound like a joke, a funny afterthought, but it definitely falls flat.

“Good.”

Sure, _good_. Why not. He feels raw, exposed to the bone. His heart on his sleeve and his mind completely lost in the smell of her hair, in the pressure of her body against his. His heart seems at the verge of a stroke every time her warm breath reaches his neck but yeah, _good_. Whatever.

“Okay.”

 

**3 days**

It takes him almost two whole days to sleep off the emotional and physical hangover of his retirement party which pretty much is evidence in itself of how much his body was screaming for a break, because he is now old as balls.

On the third day, he decides to use his outside swimming pool to chill instead of using it for therapeutical exercises and fixes himself something to eat that takes more than 15 minutes to make, just because he has kind of forgotten how much he liked to mess around in the kitchen. It’s not all nice and relaxing, of course, because his lawyer can’t seem to be able to stop calling his cell phone to urge him to set meetings and sign papers. Something about not losing momentum and bugging the hell out of him.

The fifteenth time his phone rings is the first time the caller id doesn’t show the name of his tiresome lawyer.

“I’m in the neighborhood. I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Ginny announces, which constitutes the summary of their less than twenty second conversation.

Mike very carefully doesn’t freak out. He doesn’t have any reason to freak out, just Baker passing by, nothing new about that, and he has these unrequited feelings completely under control.

So yeah, piece of cake, and if he changes his jeans and T-shirt because he is not completely sure they smell clean and look respectable enough, so what about it.

It takes her seventeen minutes to arrive, –but who is counting?– with a six-pack of beer and a jumbo bag of chips. “I thought we could watch the exhibition game together.”

The exhibition game, yes. He has almost forgotten about the Mets and Phillies playing and that technically it is now his job to keep an eye on this sort of things.

“Sure.”

She goes past him and towards the couch and Mike looks at the ceiling for one moment wondering what the hell is he getting himself into before following her. He picks up the remote and turns on the TV searching for the right channel while she takes her sneakers off and sits on the floor with her back resting on the sofa.

“You know that piece of furniture right behind you is meant to be seated on, right?”

She shrugs and disregards him with a fluid movement of her hand before grabbing the bag of chips. Her legs falling open in the butterfly posture like is nothing and he wonders at the elasticity of her tight jeans to allow her to do that so easily.

“Couches are for old people.”

He also wonders if her t-shirt would be as soft to the touch as it looks, if it would smell like a mix of her soap and worn out clothes, but he is not going to delve into that.

“Of course they are.”

And because he is a completely stupid person who makes questionable choices, he goes and ignores his knees in favor of sitting beside her on the floor, his legs sprawled and his arms awkwardly in front of him as he tries to decide what to do with them.

“Twitter says that you have signed with Fox Sports.”

“Who am I to contradict twitter?”

He signed like six hours ago, apparently time enough for everybody to find out before he can even wrap his head around it.

On the TV screen Jay Bruce hits the ball and the Mets score a run when Steven Matz makes it to home base.

“So are you going to have to move out or something?”

Mike looks at her but she doesn’t tear her eyes away from the TV. He contemplates telling her that he once kind of promised her that he wouldn’t go away but it seems like the answer to a question she isn’t asking.

“No. No moving on sight.”

She nods. Mike makes an effort and concentrates back on the game being played. The Phillies don’t seem to be having a good day.

She opens a beer, munches a handful of chips. “Does your contract have any special clauses?”

He looks back at her a little startled — a little worried too, with his gaze sharpened trying to figure what the question is about, but she gives him nothing. His contract has clauses for sure, lots and lots of clauses but he is not sure he would call any of them special.

“What kind of special clause?”

“Like I don’t know, regarding the clubs?”

Okay. The conversation is starting to make him feel nervous and not the good kind of nervous. He tries to turn to face her but his damn knees and the floor are a problem so he ends up being contorted in, probably, a very undignified way.

“What’s up with the twenty questions, Baker?”

She takes a deep breath and looks at him straight for the first time since she sat on the goddamn floor and he can finally see her eyes, try to get a feeling of what all this is about but what he finds in her gaze is not at all reassuring. She looks… conflicted.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ginny says sounding exactly as if it were indeed something, “It’s just — I don’t know, maybe us being friends could be a problem?”

“A problem? For whom?”

She shrugs.“PR?” She looks genuinely concerned which baffles him. “It could be said you give preferential treatment on your commentaries or something.”

“Jesus, Ginny. It’s a sport anchor job, not a grand jury.”

She bites her lower lip like she had been scolded and then she smiles briefly, looking away.

There are whole conversations in what she doesn’t say, Mike knows it, it was part of his job to know what she was up to just by looking into her eyes.

“No — yes, of course. I was just checking.”

He wants to take her hand, his fingers tingle at the thought of reaching out and entangling their fingers together. He wants to turn off the TV and look her in the eye until she tells him what’s bothering her in soft whispers.

“What is going on?”

She takes a deep, deep breath and exhales the air very slowly, soundly filling the room, closes her legs and braces her knees. She looks tiny like that, folded upon herself, but then she looks at him with a steady gaze, with the same kind of determination he has seen a thousand times before.

“I like you-like you like you, too,” she says. 

Mike freezes. Completely. Absolutely. He feels his insides getting _gripped_ by her words, strangled, as if all his body was fighting for survival, after falling of a plane or having submerged into water for far too long.

She keeps holding his gaze and whatever she sees there makes her smile, broadly, with big, sweet dimples in her cheeks and spur her into action.

She unfolds her legs and plants a firm hand on the space created between them on the floor leaning on, closing the distance slowly, looking blatantly at his lips.

Mike knows he should _do_ something, like meeting her halfway or better, _say_ something because he is a firm believer in no grey areas and explicit consent.

“Baker—” 

“Shut up.”

Her lips land on his. Dry, soft, undemanding. He really doesn’t know what to do with himself because he is completely ready to follow her lead but she is not giving up any clues. She doesn’t retreat but doesn’t seem ready to deepen the kiss either so he makes fists of his hands and waits, as if his heart weren’t pounding deep, increasingly fast beats — as if his whole body weren’t screaming for movement.

She moves her lips, slowly, tentatively, and Mike realizes that she is being cautious, ready to accept rejection, cut her loses and flee.

Yeah, sure. As if.

They are not touching anywhere else but their mouths so he raises his right hand and blindly finds her wrist, he follows the smooth skin left uncovered by her t-shirt up her arm to her shoulder and then to the side of her neck where his fingers sprawl, his thumb following the line of her jaw in a light caress.

It is not meant as encouragement but as reassurance, nevertheless, Ginny leans on his touch, She opens her mouth and gasps into his lips and Mike’s carefully thought plan about being unimposing and patient flies right out of the window.

He opens his mouth to her, to sloopy, consuming, deep kisses that taste like chips and imported beer. His hand travels to her nape, entangling his fingers in her soft curl as she changes her gravity center and the next thing he knows is that one of her hands is on his shoulder for leverage, the other goes to his face, short nails scraping along the skin under his beard, as she passes one long, smooth leg over his, framing his hips with her knees.

It is fucking madness.

Both his hands go to her hips, his fingers spreading over her jeans and _grabbing_ the toned flesh underneath. She hums, she fucking hums into his mouth and by God, if he weren’t already very turned on by now, that would have certainly sealed the deal.

She breaks the kiss that has been going on for what feels like the last century or so and he opens his eyes. She is still so close that he can feel her agitated breathing on his face, smiling broadly and freely as one of her hands get tangled on the hair of his nape.

“The poster over my bed thing? Not as much about sport inspiration as I told you,” she says.

“Fuck.” Which all in all he considers it to be a quite convincing argument given that his brain has most possible fused at the thought of Ginny Baker maybe crushing on him.

He snakes one of his arms up her back and pushes using his upper body to lay them both on the floor masterly avoiding hitting the auxiliary table.They are both on their sides, their bodies plastered to one another and yet fully clothed as Mike ventures two lucky fingers under the hem of her shirt just above the waist of her jeans and growls as he kisses, bites and sucks on the delicate skin of her neck and she grants him access.

The TV is still on, the game playing brilliantly in all its HD-full splendor but who the fuck cares.

“Just so you know, this house has like four king size beds and three couches,” he says because, well, they are making out on the floor like fucking teenagers when there is plenty of functional, comfortable furniture around to be taking advantage of.

“That is an ambitious proposition,” she says laughing but she slowly puts her leg over his hip, dragging her calf along the back of his thigh and okay, he is going to buy more furniture to lay on if that is what it takes.

His cell phone starts ringing once again, vibrating against the hard surface of the distant countertop. Mike blocks the sound out of his mind, _easily_ ,runs his hand from her flexed knee over his hip up, up, up, until his fingers are cupping her ass.

Ginny leans back just the tiniest bit, barely enough to look at him in the eye. “Aren’t you going to get that?” she asks, but she doesn’t make any intention to move her leg that is currently entrapping him.

“Nop.”

“Okay.”

She smiles into his lips with fascinatingly erotic results as her hand sneaks under his shirt, tracing with her fingers the lines of taut muscles in his back. It’s almost an innocent kind of touch, just the pads of her fingers traveling over his skin but it makes him struggle for air. _This_. The unrushed caresses, the unmasked affection that he thinks he can trace in her movements it’s what he have missed the most over the years.

Her phone starts ringing and Mike pulls her against himself. His hard on evident and insistent against her inner thigh even through layers of jeans. Ginny gasps, her breath warm and moist against his ear.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” he asks against the soft skin of her neck.

“Asshole,” she says a little breathless as she rotates her hips in retaliation.

He wants to take this slow, like agonizingly slow. Make out for hours and then spend some hours more between her legs until his knees hurt and his back won’t take anymore, the both of them sweaty and exhausted and then maybe fall asleep embracing her from behind with his nose buried in the hair behind her ear. Sadly his body is also screaming for more skin on skin contact, for more friction and when Ginny uses the grip of her leg to buck her hips deliciously against his all air leaves his lungs.

“Fuck.”

“That is what I keep hearing and yet–”

His landline phone starts ringing and Mike is ready to curse Alexander Bell and all the fucking telephones in the world.

“Yo, Mike, pick it up.” Blip’s voice fills in the place, a little metallic but clear through the answering machine and both, he and Ginny, groan loudly in discomfort. “I know you are there because you are not picking your cell phone. Listen, the guys have decided to go out for drinks and I’m picking you up in ten. Oh and try to get a hold on Baker, she is not picking her phone either.”

He rolls around so that his back is on the floor, his eyes closed as he exhales loudly. The distance between them feels unfathomable now although it could be measured in inches. The air is cold and unforgiving around him but he is glad given that he has apparently nine minutes before Sanders sticks in his ugly, asshat face.

“So I guess it is a good thing that we are still fully clothed,” Ginny says. He opens his eyes and turns to look at her, disheveled and flustered. 

“I think we are going to have to revisit that “good thing” concept of yours.”

 

**6 days**

There are tv promos for him to shoot, wardrobe fittings to attend and a lot of people to meet and shakes hands with before he formally starts his new job. He is busy coming and going and learning all kind of new things that he is supposed to master in no time, which gives him the perfect excuse to avoid any one on one encounter with Ginny Baker. Subtly, because he is a jerk but he is not that kind of jerk. He just manages to be needed elsewhere when he could be running into her.

Mike is a little embarrassed at this tactical retreat technique of his, not enough to stop using it but enough to feel a pang of guilt whenever he catches a glimpse of her annoyed face on a sports newsreel. He has never been this kind of guy before, not even with one night stands groupies that wanted more than he had agreed to give. Mike Lawson makes his bed and lays on it – literally and figuratively, thank you very much – but this time thing with Baker just messes with his head a little bit too much so he hides and deflects his ass out like the coward he has turned out to be.

His subconscious mind has some trouble catching up with the new strategy, and insists on replaying their make out session from three days ago non-stop. He is trapped in a maddening loop. It seems that it doesn’t matter what he is doing or what he is supposed to be paying attention to, there is a part of his brain permanently occupied with the memory of his hands roaming over her body. A Post Cockblocked Sex Syndrome or some other debauchery like that. It’s the only way to explain his fatal miscalculation when Sander invites him over for lasagna at his home and he accepts. 

He is not thinking clearly. He is not thinking at all.

That is how he ends up at the Sanders, helping Evelyn with the salad and crudities while Blip helps his children set the table and Ginny sits at the kitchen island stealing his ingredients and munching over, with the images of her mouth nibbling on his own lips and neck playing in the background of his consciousness.

So much for the tactical avoidance thing. He needs to concentrate on the carrots for God’s sake or he is going to lose a finger in the silliest of ways.

“I didn’t know you knew how to cook,” Evelyn says and Mike smiles sideway because this is something he has always been proud of, knowing how to fix a decent meal since way before he knew how to be a decent ballplayer. Also, chit chatting? sure, anything that helps him cover the fact that he is blatantly fantasizing about the pitcher in the room. 

“I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”

He tries to focus on the movements of the knife and his fingers but the task is monotonous and learned so long ago that his mind easily slips and he carelessly lifts his gaze. Ginny rolls her eyes with a little smile and he knows she is going to tease him even before she opens her mouth. 

It provoques strange things at the bottom of his stomach.

“Guys, he is just chopping vegetables, let’s not get overexcited.” She shamelessly steals a piece of cutted carrot and tilts her head looking at him in obvious provocation. “It’s not like he is a famous, professional baseball player or anything.”

He wants to flee, run as fast as he can leaving a Mike-shaped hole in the wall behind him. That or to round the kitchen island, grab her by the hips and kiss her thoroughly against the counter.

Either. Both.

This is ridiculous.

He takes a calming breath that he tries to disguise as annoyance and stops what he is doing to point at her with the knife. He uses his stern face and the voice he usually reserved for Captain-to-player talks.

“Ey, don’t mock my chopping prowess. It’ll get me to win Celebrity Cook Off when my handsomeness stop paying off.”

“So like… in six months?” Blips intervenes and goes to high-five Ginny who laughs loud at the joke, her head thrown back leaving the column of her throat exposed and her chest rising and falling quickly with the tempo of her guffaws.

Her mirth is contagious and her appearance mesmerizing in a way that makes him think of Helen of Troy.

“Weren’t you making yourself scarce and useful?” he asks Blip as the man takes a seat next to Ginny at the kitchen island. At his side Evelyn tops with cheese the lasagna. “Seriously, how do you put up with him?” he asks her indignantly but she merely looks with indulgence at her traitor of a husband.

“I am a saint.”

“Obviously!”

For some reason that makes Ginny laugh harder and he tries not to smile back but his face is in uncollaborative terms with his brain so he does it anyway. Enormously. Showing teeth and everything, like a fucking unexperienced teenager. He looks down again, sinking his head as low as possible and hides his contorting features that for sure resemblance a goddamned cartoon with heart-eyes while he resumes chopping. 

“You two are going to pay for that. No carrot sticks for the Mean Team,” he says. Evelyn pats him conciliatory on his back as she passes by to put the dish in the oven. “You’ll cry over each other’s shoulders in the player’s bus damning the day you joke made you lose your vegetables. Yep that will be my vengeance.”

It’s probably the lamest thing he has had the chance to say in all his pathetic existence. Blips looks at him like he needs an urgent lobotomy but Ginny snorts, her ongoing laugh like a creative kind of curse on his soul.

“Ah, ah. No way,” Ginny protests. “I’ve been putting up with you and your spreading limbs for two years, I’ve earned my own two seats.”

“Spreading limbs?” the other woman asks with sudden interest.

“All lies, I do not spread,“ he says conciliatory to his friend’s wife. “I do not spread,” he repeats, this time pointing a threatening finger at Baker.

Ginny crosses her arms over her chest. “Of course you do.” A defiant look as he asks for back up. “Blip?”

Sanders lifts his hands in surrender and shakes his head lightly. “I pledge the fifth on that one.”

Evelyn interest pikes, quickly and evident. “Really? We will see about that.”

They look at each other with bright eyes, Blip and Evelyn. With the kind of secret camaraderie that he wishes he had had when he was married. The holy grail that he never couldn’t quite achieve with Rachel. Their relationship was more like tiptoeing at the side of the pool but never falling, for as much or as little as they tried.

It’s a reflex forged in the field, his own eyes search for Ginny’s, for a crumb of unconditional fondness directed at him.

Mike could get used to this. Cooking for people and entertaining friends, bantering and bickering, glasses of wine and dinner dates. The easy, obvious affection thriving around the house. The whole fucking package.

Gods, he feels so _eager_ to be in a position to get used to something akin this, that the pang of envy leaves him as breathless as a hit on the solar plexus. 

It is a hard epiphany, the realization that he is even far more fucked up than he already suspected that he was.

“Seriously Baker, you are going to miss my limbs.”

Blips interrupts his unspoken moment of marital bliss with his wife to give him a sideways look. “Oh God no, I see where this is heading.”

Ginny just seems curious. “Your limbs?”

Look, he is man enough to admit that his massive crush on Baker it’s a little more than a crush, it’s more like he has fallen a little in love with her. More than a little. Whatever. He can deal with that. He has been dealing with that and one could even argue that he has been doing so exceedingly well given the circumstances.

No biggie. Been there, done that, has the divorce certificate to prove it.

But you see, Mike is also aware that he has spent all his adult life and a significative part of his formative years with this constant craving to be a part of something bigger, to fit in, to relate. That has been a crucial part of being a baseball player, to be tied to a particular group of people, to a team. Unconditionally.

He needs to belong like he needs to breath. At the moment, he feels like he belongs here.

“You are going to miss my arms, specifically.”

“And here we go,” Blip says with regret.

He smiles brightly, puts his hands on his hips because putting them on his head in order to flex the biceps seems a little bit over the top. “These were elected the world’s more delectable arms by Out magazine.”

Blip rolls his eyes. “Man, was that a bad week. You insisted on buying an signing copies to every teammate”

“I am thoughtful like that.”

“Out magazine?” Ginny asks, blatant playfulness as he leans on the counter to steal another piece of carrot. “Interesting.”

 _This is it_ , he thinks and then _this is it, this is it, this is it_ like in a loop because his fucking brain seems to be in the mood of really making a point. For the first time in forever he is not searching for more.

So yes. He is very, very fucked.

 

**10 days**

He doesn’t go to a shrink because, frankly, who in hell would want to open that can of worms, but there are dark bags under his eyes and when he looks in the mirror his reflection seems restless and exhausted as only not very well adjusted people do. No surprise there, he feels exactly that much restless and completely exhausted, the not very well adjusted part is just a given at this point. Still he manages to appear on TV and look fairly presentable, if the focus groups are to be trusted, which reminds him that he really should buy a bottle of wine to his magical make-up artist.

Or a fruit basket, or a trip to Disneyland. Something that says “Thanks for not letting me look like shit on national tv”.

So he doesn’t approach professional help because of undisclosed reasons (he doesn’t want to hear what he already knows that he doesn’t want to hear), but that doesn’t mean that he is in denial about the fact that erratic sleeping and re-enacting old conversations he had with his ex-wife in the past is a very bad combination that doesn’t speak precisely of a sound mind.

Yes, he is a smart guy like that. Someone give him a star sticker.

The thing with Raquel is that he barely remembers the fights anymore, although he knows that there were plenty of them. A whole lot of strong arguments that ended abruptly with mean verbal punches and tense silences, but the screams and angry, ugly accusations were always easy for him to disregard. The other things she said, though, the calm, sincere words uttered in quiet conversation are branded in his skin as if tattooed with fire. Like scars of the pucky, unhealed kind.

When he lets his ward down those words are the ones that come to torment him and it terrifies him more than he is ready to admit that she might have been right about every single one of them. That he only craved what he couldn’t have, that his incapability to be completely sincere with himself about what he wanted rendered him alone. That he got so good at faking in order to make it that he might have forgotten how to be real and true.

So yeah, nothing deep. 

Fuck.

Rachel always was the smartest person in the room, the kindest too, if politics weren’t involved. She wouldn’t have said any of that if she wouldn’t have thought it to be true and Mike is vaguely aware of how pathetic and misguided is that he wants to call her and hear Rachel’s voice telling him that she was wrong, that he is capable and deserving of a happier ending. A long time ago she was the person that reassured him and mended his broken pieces but now he feels frail and raw, with nothing to hold him together anymore, not the vague responsibilities as captain of a team, not even baseball. 

He doesn’t call his ex-wife, of course. He might be in need of a good shrink but he is not completely deluded, thank you very much, so he tries to distract the anguish anxiety within himself working out – for an hour – with yoga – for five minutes – and with a shower – for twenty minutes – but he still ends up taking his phone out of his pocket and making a call because he is not that kind of smart. Never, never have been.

“The game from today have been almost painful to watch,” he says as soon as she picks up. Not a “hello”, not even a vague apology for the late hour.

At the other end of the line Ginny sighs heavily and Mike has the faintest remorse for starting the conversation commenting on the very public humiliation of their team, like tactless asshole he is more often than not.

“Shut up.”

The Giants have completely crushed The Padres in their first encounter of the offseason. Devastatingly so. He had to literally take his eyes away from the screen to avoid secondhand embarrassment although Ginny had been able to save some face by effectively striking out a couple of batters. 

“No, really I appreciate it.” He lets himself fall on the couch messily, puts his naked feet over the near coffee table and his his right arm under his head. “Nice touch for my reputation that you loose your first game without me and everything but boy, oh boy.”

“Glad you were having a good time at our expense, Lawson.”

He laughs a little, softly. She sounds pissed off and frustrated which is pretty much her default mood after loosing any game. He can imagine the stern, tired look on her face as he looks intently at the blank ceiling. He can imagine a lot of other things too, actually, less appropriate, equally realistic _things_. 

“Ginny, it’s just an exhibition game,” he tries conciliatory. “This is what the offseason is for, to adjust to changes and get the hang of it before the real deal begins.”

“I know, I know.” She sighs into the receiver but she doesn’t sound any more relaxed. “It’s just… It has been such a fucking _bad_ game.”

“I’ve seen worse.” 

“Really?”

“No.” 

She snorts, but her amusement falls short and after a long, deep breath their lack of words creates a new tension that makes Mike roll his neck and change his position on the couch.

“Came on,” he says finally. “What can I do to cheer you up?” he asks, his intonation far more flirtatious than intended.

Ginny doesn't say anything for a moment. The silence stretches along for seconds, minutes, whole, fucking years. Mike closes his eyes and cringes as his heart races up and hopes against hope that she hadn’t heard what he had just said as the come on that was absolutely not intentional.

Almost not intentional.

“Would you come over here?” she asks and it’s funny, really, in the completely not-comical sense that she thinks that there is any chance of him refusing to grant her request. It is so obvious that he would go wherever and whenever she wants that it’s ridiculous for him to try to sound cool, not that it had ever stopped him before.

“Uhmm, sure, why not?”

 _Why not._ He is a dumbass. He is a stupid dumbass,

Mike picks up his leather jacket on his way out the house and spends half the ride to the Omni convincing himself that this is not a booty call. Her spirits are low, she feels frustrated, they have had long talks before about this kind of things, any kind of things, lots and lots of times before.

There is nothing else going on here.

Except it totally is a booty call. He is no longer her captain, not even her teammate, and it seems a little ludicrous that they would meet this late at night to talk about the performance issues of the Padres at a game with zero consequences in the great scheme of things, so he spends the other half of the ride trying. Not. To freak. The hell. Out.

Badly.

His inner reasoning goes more or less like this: _assuming_ this is a booty call (which it totally is), maybe that is exactly what he needs to put his mind at rest and his feet back on solid ground. Sex. Just sex. Stop obsessing about might have beens and romanticizing imposibles. Sex her out of his system so to speak. What was what Rachel said again? That he craved the things he couldn’t have? Great, so he is going to have sex with Ginny Baker and he is going to find out that he is not as in love with her as he imagines him to be.

Sounds like a great plan to him.

The building is dark and empty when he enters it, just flickers of static, fluorescent light here and there as he walks the hallways. He rides the elevator up to her floor with the feeling that there is nobody else in the world, like the scenario of a post-apocalyptic movie and the palms of his hands sweat as if he were about to fight for his life.

Maybe he is, who knows anymore.

She opens the door wearing sweatpants, a worn out t-shirt that looks a little too big to have been always hers and a hasty ponytail, making him suddenly too formally dressed with his designer jeans and his expensive leather jacket.

“Hi,” he says.

She smiles just the tiniest bit. “Hi.”

It is awkward as she lets him in and they stand still three feet away from the door and twenty inches away from each other. He shrugs and waits for her to make up her mind about what she wants to happen and lead the way. He is bulky, at times dramatically old in comparison with her and he feels slightly insecure and a little bit horny, which sounds like the very definition of a textbook pervert. He plants his feet on the floor as if readying himself to be charged against and stands still, not moving a single muscle fiber until she tells him to do so in a very unambiguous, completely explicit way.

“So?” she says after a moment. “Weren’t you supposed to be here to cheer me up?”

Yeah, well, he is supposed to do and not do a lot of different things. He is not a good horse to bet on when talking about expectations.

She crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her head making her look a little angry or impatient. She is not angry though, he would be able to tell if she were but she is certainly adamant enough that he is compelled to comply, not sure what he is going to say until he says it.

“Once Miller paid for an add in the Union Tribune. He made up some obviously fake name and offered free telephonic consults of dermatology.” He moves his hands as he talks, but that is the only concession he makes. “It took Butch a whole week to figure out why strangers called to his cell phone asking for a Dr. Wrinkledballs to tell him about hairy moles and nasty rushes in uncomfortable places.”

Her guffaw is sudden and loud like a summer storm, like a last minute home run, her shoulders shake and her eyes bright as she laughs with all that she got, dimples and everything. Mike shrugs and arches an eyebrow in a “shit happens” kind of way.

“Come here,” she says, the words barely understandable as she keeps laughing but she takes a step in his directión and puts both her hands in his jaw directing his mouth towards hers so, okay, her intentions are crystal clear. 

Yeah. Okay.

Mike can feel her smile over his lips, her mouth open and demanding as her fingers softly caress his beard. He follows her lead with some restraint, puts his hands on her hips and rest them there, almost casually, trying that his blatant interest won’t be perceived in any kind of shape or form as coaxing .

He is still aiming for unambiguous and explicit here.

She is barefoot and compensates the height difference on tiptoes until his lips seem to become the main focus of her attention and she draws him down to her with a hand on his nape. She kisses like she does everything else, with a determination that leaves him breathless. She licks into his mouth, slow and sloppy, her teeth biting into his lower lip hard enough to make a statement but without ever getting to tear the soft skin. 

Mike groans. 

His necks is starting to protest the forced angle of the kiss but he has endured far worse without the promising reward he is offered now so there is approximately zero chance in fucking hell of him interrupting the very, _very_ pleasant assault she is inflicting on his mouth.

Ginny starts to push the jacket off his shoulders and he tries to hide his amusement as she grunts her frustration when the right sleeve gets stuck at his elbow. She breaks the kiss but doesn’t pull back, doesn’t go anywhere, her lips half still gracing his as they both breathe hard into each other mouths. 

It is goddamned, fucking erotic. 

He is not sixteen, for the love of God, he is not ever _twice_ that age and he is half hard and panting like a hotheaded teenager as her hands play with the hem of his shirt and her cold fingers land on the skin of his waist. He gasps. He is tempted to stick out his tongue and just lick over her full, warm lips but he doesn’t. He still doesn’t make a single move.

Ginny’s hands are a little rough and strong but she teases the pads on her fingers down his abdomen and the sensation is electric, it raises goosebumps all over his skin, his breathing loud erratic seems to echo all over the place. Ginny bites his lower lip one more time before releasing it and taking a step back to look at him in the eye, his hands slipping off her hips where they had been all this time and falling loosely at his sides.

“Are you waiting for an invitation or something?” 

She looks annoyed, a little incredulous even. He feels at the verge of some kind of stroke.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse and breathless. “I am, actually.”

She arches an eyebrow but her hands go to the hem of her own t-shirt and in one fluid motion takes it off letting it fall to her feet.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

She is not wearing a bra and the sudden vision of her full, smooth, fucking perfect breasts is like an epiphany. He can’t tear his eyes apart from them. They are very, very good breasts, the kind of breast that are the downfall of civilizations and have temples raised in their name.

“Is this invitation enough for you or do you need one sealed and mailed?”

“Oh no, I think I’m okay. Yes.” Mike lets his jacket fall off his arms and to the floor, taking a step towards her and not caring at all about walking or not over the discarded clothes. He reclaims her hips with his hands pulling her into him and making their hips collide. “Although , you know, I’m a big fan of _words_ ,” he says against her mouth before kissing her dirty and deep, all tongue and lips and teeth.

He is flustered all over and so turned on that all he can think about is how in hell is he going to make her come screaming his name if he can’t even _breathe_ properly with all his clothes still on. 

Her hands go the loops of his jeans and she pulls him towards her as she starts to walk backwards. She doesn’t even need to make much of an effort, he would follow her wherever, she is like a fucking supernova and he never stood a chance. They walk and they kiss, but advancing straight on the right direction proves to be difficult to achieve in a moderately coordinated way. They stumble and almost fall, their mouths never leaving each other, grossly attached until the edge of the mattress bups lightly against the side of his leg. Ginny sighs then, leaving his lips to nip at his neck before going on tiptoes, her breathing tickling against the shell of his ear.

“Would you come to bed with me and fuck me?” she says the words deliberately slow, drawing the vowels and exaggerating the consonants as if trying to make herself understood by a lesser species. 

It is way, way hotter than it should be.

“Shit.” Mike groans and slides his hands down her body, from the contour of her hips to the back of the tights and grabs her there. She is all tight muscle under his fingers,willing and capable and fucking sexy as he lifts her up and tosses her onto the bed.

She laughs, a lovely mess of sprawled limbs and bouncy breasts. Something clenches inside Mike’s gut. He would like to hear that laugh a thousand times a day, seven days a week because he is completely, utterly charmed by this woman. Yeah, so that is inconvenient given that he is supposedly trying to get her out of his system with purely physical, mindblowing sex and all that jazz.

“You should have a little respect for your elders,” he admonishes her, a knee on the bed between her legs as he starts to work on her pants.

She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly as if he were speaking complete nonsenses but arches her hips to ease his task and her breath catches in her lungs when their eyes meet, pupils black, dilated and full of lust. He takes his time running his hands down her legs, the tips of his fingers sinking into her flesh as if they were sculpted by Bernini. Fucking, pure art.

“I’ve been told respect have to be _earned_ ,” she has the insolence to say, issuing a challenge with every word, sitting up to get a hold of his neck and pulling him to her again.

“Oh, I plan to earn it all right.”

Mike leans on the bed on his left side, his right hand roams over her skin from thigh to hip, to navel, to the side of her ribcage as his mouth travels south, nibbling on her neck and licking down her clavicle until his beard scraps the soft skin of her cleavage. 

She hums, her hands entangling in his head, scratching carefully his scalp and Mike has to take a couple of deep breaths to calm the fuck down. He can feel her breathing become shallow and agitated as he licks and sucks and bites on one nipple while his right hand rubs and caress the other. Gods, he wants to keep doing this all night but he also can’t wait to do a lot of other stuff, and nice and slow doesn’t seem like the theme of the night.

It all is a little frenzied. He changes angles, bites lightly the underside of her breast before heading with his mouth to the other one and she yelps appreciatively as his tongue makes contact with her taut nipple. His hand travels south, teasing with his fingers the elastic of her underwear when she starts groaning, her hands pulling franfrictally at the back of his shirt.

“I really need you to get your clothes off, like right now.” Her voice quivers and Mike is more than a little surprised when he lifts his head and sees the blatant need in her eyes, wide, obvious and dark. 

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” 

He rolls away to stand at the side of the bed, kicking his shoes and taking his t-shirt off at the same time, efficiently, discarding the items carelessly before unbuttoning the fly of his pants.

“Fuck.” 

She bites her lower lip, one of her hand goes to stroke one of her breast as the other travels boldly to the junction of her legs. She moans, long and loud, her hips buck in the air, her skin glowing as she starts to break a sweat. Looking intently at him as she touches herself.

Is the single sexier thing that Mike has ever seen. He is impossibly hard as his pulse trump in his ears, and a little dumbstruck. Incomprehensibly proud that he could be causing this reaction in her.

“This is really working for you?” it’s not quite a question, more like an incredulous statement. She is hands down gorgeous, a damned fantasy made flesh and bones and skin. So, so much skin. His ribs seem a little bit too small for his lungs. His fly open but jeans still somehow perched on his hips and a hard on that is starting to feel more than uncomfortable as she keeps looking at him as if he were the stuff good wet dreams were made of. 

She is Ginny fucking Baker and the whole world is at her feet. She has no business looking at him like that.

“Come here,” she says in a voice broken by desire and he is most certainly not going to make her ask twice. Nobody has ever denied her anything spoken in that voice, he is sure of that.

He kicks the jeans off and practically jumps on the bed, gripping the back of her neck and kissing her hard, parting her lips with his tongue and sucking on her lips. His other hand goes to her waist, to her hip until he finds again the elastic of her panties and slips his fingers under the cloth, advancing inch after inch until she gasps and her legs fall open leaving him room to maneuver. Both her hands sneak up and down his back as if learning to read braille on his tendons and muscles and Mike is going to need a very compelling reason to get out of this bed ever again.

She is wet, damp between her legs, and as he teases her entrance with long, determined strokes with the pads of his fingers, his heart starts to pound so fast and so hard that he is mildly afraid that might go into cardiac arrest. He sweeps a finger in a sloppy circle around her entrance while his thumb finds her clit and her legs tense entrapping him between them, her hips bucking unforgivingly against his hand as she cries out his name.

“Mike!”

He thrust a finger inside her and bends it, and the moment he adds another one, she breaks the kiss, panting against his mouth as her whole body contracts, groaning loudly as she comes.

“Fucking fuck,” he murmurs eloquently as she rides the last waves of her orgams against his hand and becomes boneless, her arms still around him as if he were planning on going anywhere.

Her upper body is mostly under his, his hand still trapped between her legs and boosts himself up onto his free forearm, creating a minimal distance between their faces to look at her in the eye.

“Really?” he asks in earnest. 

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, her smile barely visible, too content and relaxed to feign irritation. Her index finger traces the line of his jaw, the contour of his lower lip.

“It’s been a while,” she explains, her voice a little rougher than before. “Jerk.”

”I am definitely not complaining.”

He bites her finger, traps it between his teeth and nibbles on it, on the palm of her hand and she puts him down for another slow kiss. His fingers are still inside her and their stupid underwear is still on, as if they were under the bleaches in high school. 

“So… did I cheer you up?” And because he is a complete ashole he puntualizates each word curling his fingers, grazing slightly his thumb over her overstimulated clit. 

She gasps, she roams her hands over his shoulders, his chest, her short nails scratching softly his skin. “I don’t know. It has been a pretty bad game.”

It has been the fucking worst game of the year. He doesn’t say it, of course, he is far too focussed on keeping his breathing under control and on watching her face react to what his own hand is doing to her to be a smartass. He catalogs every gasp and every moan, memorizes every little smile as his fingers work their way inside her again. For future reference. Maybe. Hopefully. He mights as well stop deluding himself into thinking this is just his standard one night stand. 

He doubts there has ever been anything standard regarding Ginny Baker.

“Well, we can work on cheer you up for as long as you want”

She snorts, un-elegant and charmingly. “A little optimistic, aren’t we?”

Her hand slides down his chest, his abs, down, down, down, and he has to lean in and kiss her again, lick the soft skin under her ear, bite the flesh where her neck ends and her shoulder begins. Her hand gets into his boxers and finds him there, hard and ready. He is been hard and ready almost since he set foot on her room. Her fingers wrap around him and start to pump him unhurriedly and he feels it in every goddamn cell of his abused body. 

He helplessly thrust his hips, his back protest but he ignores the dull pain in favor of keeping doing what he is currently doing.

He wants to go down on her, to rub his hands and his nose and his mouth along her body, he wants to sink his head between his thighs and eat her out until she won’t be able think straight.

Ginny seems to be having other ideas, though.

“I can’t believe I have to keep saying this,” she says breathlessly, pushing frantically his boxers down with her free hand, “but get all your damn clothes off.”

“Okay, okay. Just let me–”

She hisses when he moves his hand away from between her legs and he groans as he turns and moves away giving his back a break. The air of the room feels cold and damp against his feverish skin as they both get rid of their underwear.

 

Ginny fumbles around the bedside table and procures the foiled package of a condom, and well, okay, he is here just to please. Pun most decidedly intended. She shakes her shoulders as she does sometimes when she is out in the field, her demeanor cool and controlled but as she walks with her knees across the bed towards him her hands betray her, trembling slightly when she tries to open the foil. Mike is pretty sure he is a big, big jerk for being a little into that.

“Do you need help with that or do you want to do it yourself?”

Ginny stops only a moment to give him an annoyed look in all her naked glory, like he couldn’t unnerve her more with his inane questions if he tried.

“Fine,” he says with his trademark arrogance, lying upside on the covers and bringing his hands up to accommodate the pillow under his head. His biceps flex, his ribcage expands and if Ginny seems to lose her concentration as she looks at him from the corner of her eyes, he is gentleman enough not to point it out. “Have it your way.”

“Yes. I plan to. If you shut up.”

She finally, _finally_ , breaks the wrap and hesitatingly rolls the condom down his length, far more slowly than he is comfortable with. He swallows loudly, his breathing a little erratic as Ginny hops a leg over his hips and positions herself.

“Be gentle,” he says as half a joke, but it sounds almost like a plea. Whatever.

She reaches down with one hand and sighs, looks at him deadly in the eyes as she starts to take him in and fuck, _fuck_. He takes air in a big gulp as if he was drowning, he _is_ drowning, his hands reach for her rocking hips and he throws his head back onto the pillow.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Ginny groans when she bottoms out, loud and throaty, her hands plastered against the sides of his stomach as she moves, her fingers spread and roaming over his skin. He sits up in a sudden movement and the angle changes enough for her to gasp. He can barely move his hips under her but he can reach her bouncing breasts with his mouth so he goes along with it most willingly. His hands cup and squeezes her ass cheeks with probably more force than necessary but she seems to be into it. Ginny groans and rotates her hips appreciatively and yeah, no, okay, he has to bite and suck just above her right clavicle in retaliation.

There is so much skin everywhere, warm and soft against him. He rolls her nipple around with his saliva-soaked fingers, nuzzles her neck. Her whole body is ridiculously toned, hard and smooth over his as they collide over, and over, and over, and over again.

“Mike.” She practically purrs his name and an electric jolt runs all along his column and straight to his balls. That sound is going to be in his head till the day he dies. He will be old and grey, won’t be able to remember who he is anymore but he will remember the way she had just say his name.

His back is going give him hell for it tomorrow but he thrust up into her and she fuckin whimpers, for the love of God. Her hands clutch at his nape, at his shoulders, at his arms with urgency, raking his skin with her fingers.

He is not going to last long, he can feel the tingling sensation spreading within his core, his toes curling with tension. He sneaks his head and rasp his bear against the sensitive skin of her breast and cleavage, sucks hard on her pulse point as he slips one hand between them, trying to hastily stimulate her clit as he loses the rhythm of her rocking hips.

He comes with a loud groan. “Fuck,” he says after one, two, three last uncoordinated thrusts, and lets himself fall unceremoniously over the bed, Ginny somehow plastered to him, slick and soft and warm and _everything_. 

Mike is a little ashamed to admit that he is not sure if she has come a second time but it seems somehow petty to ask so he wraps his arms around her as they both try to catch their breathing. The weight of her body over his chest unfamiliar and welcome as he nuzzles his nose against the locks of hair that has escaped the ponytail. He wants to kiss her long, and unhurriedly and go to sleep smelling his saliva on her skin, he wants to cover them both with the sheets, a wrap of limbs and warmth, and don’t come out in a week.

So much for getting her out of his system and shit.

He runs his index fingers along her spine lazily and when she hums he can feel the vibration all over his body. He is going to have to move to get rid of the condom in the immediate future but he is very reluctant to break the awkward-free, post-coital hazy moment. He has like twenty kinds of no guaranties of finding himself in this situation with her ever again.

“So… are you in a better mood yet?” he asks candidly.

Her laughter takes him a little by surprise. It seems endless and intangible like the sky. She shakes lightly on top of him and he can’t help to smile back at her. He is about to kiss her on the temple but she sighs and rolls over on her back and off him to stare at the ceiling solemnly.

Well, he knows his cue when it is offered as unequivocally as this one.

Mike takes a final deep breath before sitting up, before standing up. His knees crack under his weight and his back protests just a little as he goes to the bathroom to dispose of the used condom and splash some cool water over his face.

“Yes, I am,” he hears her say. 

He has almost forgotten he has asked a question under the ruthless white light of the fluorescent. Every scratch and every bruise, the red paths of his skin evident and obvious as he looks at himself in mirror. 

The wet traces of her saliva glister. 

“Glad to be of service.”

He could swear the wrinkles around his eyes are deeper and darker than they were a couple of hours ago.  
When he comes out of the bathroom she is sprawled on the bed, modestly covered by the white sheet like every woman who has conservative sex in the movies. Intentionally or not he feels effectively out of place, evicted. He should gather his things and go home to count his gains and losses, make himself scarce before something unforgivably inconvenient finds its way out of his mouth, like “I would love to fall asleep with your legs around my waist and my nose in your hair.”

“You should catch some sleep,” he says, hating himself already for picking the easy way out, the only way out. “One of us is still a professional athlete.”

“I guess it’s pretty late.” She states as a fact. There is a little polite smile on her face but nothing enough to guide him through the uncharted, awkward waters of soon-after.

“It’s okay, I’ll take a quick shower and let myself out.”

She looks at him for a moment too long, sitting up and letting the sheet fall to her waist but then she shakes her head and closes her eyes lying back on the bed with a thud.

“Goodnight,” she murmurs.

“Goodnight.”

He switches the light of the room off and as silently as possible and closes the door of the bathroom after him.

 

**27 days**

“We are watching it on the screen again in slow motion. I think it is safe to say that It was a fine forkball and we will see the best of Ginny Baker after the offseason. What do you say, Mike?”

He tries very hard not to cringe. It is by far the most difficult part about this new job, to maintain a polite, respectful poker face no matter the amount of shit talk being spoken. The images of The Padres against the Red Socks replay once again on the studio screen as if it were all he needed to change his mind and agree to the bullshit the other anchor is trying to feed him.

“I say that is a splitter gone wrong that by pure chance and a vast amount of luck has ended up as a mildly decent forkball. Ginny Baker definitely has some quirks to work out before the new season begins.”

He looks straight to his camera and smiles sideways as the target group said it was charming and non-threatening.

“Come on Mike, aren’t you being a little hard on her?”

He is and he isn’t. He guesses it is the unavoidable side effect of having disproportionate unrequited feelings for the same person you are expected to criticize in a professional capacity. There is no middle ground he can comfortably inhabit, he is either going to be terse and maybe unfairly harsh on her or a babbling mess besotted by her many charms and emotionally exposing himself on national tv.

“She can take it. This woman is a tough ballplayer and she can do far better than what she showed in that game.”

She can, of course she can. If he is going to be treated like the leading expert in all things Ginny Baker –which he is not denying to be, which he is not even denying _wanting_ to be– he is going to make damn sure that anyone who cares to listen to him knows how fucking better than most she is.

By the time the show ends the muscles of his face feel hard and rigid, his shoulders too tense for having done nothing but seating on a chair for the last couple of hours and he is starting to wonder how is he going to survive life without the stress releaser of hitting things with a bat abundantly on a daily basis. 

He is going to need a bigger backyard.

The sound guy takes his mic off but his phone starts to vibrate on his pocket before he has time to go change out of his tv anchor attire.

“Fuck you, Lawson.”

He has the presence of mind to hide behind a tall cabinet in an almost vacant room before taking the call.

Ginny doesn’t sound nearly as pissed off as he knows she is pretending to be. He smiles to the floor before sheepishly look around to see who might be watching him.

“Awwww, were you watching me on tv? I’m touched. Ey, I can sign you my official anchor picture so you can put it on your wall too.”

“You are a little piece of shit, you know that, right?”

There is humour in her voice and he laughs, leans on the nearest wall casually, trying to appear cool even though she can’t see him.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“ _I need to work harder_?” 

He groans wrinkling his nose. He hopes he didn’t sound as such a chauvinistic asshoe as that sentence lets on.

“That’s not exactly what I’ve said.” 

“That it’s exactly what you implied.”

He salutes an assistant passing nearby with a smile and a quirk of his head in which probably is the worst nothing-to-see-here demeanor that anyone has ever attempted in the history of humanity. 

“You and I both know that you can do better” He says dropping his voice, aiming for conciliatory but somehow landing on leery and sleazy. He is terribly self conscious talking to her feets away from cameras, microphones, reporters and a whole fucking tv studio.

“Do we? Maybe you should come over here and show me how much better I can do.”

Mike swallows, he could swear is audible enough that it’s echo fills the entire damn building, his rising pulse warming his skin up everywhere.

“Maybe I should.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay.”

He ends the call suppressing the impulse of consistently hit his head against the nearest wall. This fucking situation is most certainly going to end him because everytime she calls and asks him to go to her, he does. Doesn’t matter how frail the pretense of an excuse is for the latest booty call. 

She calls, he goes. As simple as that.

It’s like opening the same wound over and over again until the pain dulls and becomes the baseline for any other emotion. Not to be over dramatic or anything but he probably is just a passive agressive written journal away of regressing to teenagehood.

So let's say he is in love with her for the sake of of the discussion and because well, he _is_ in love with her. Without doubt, discussion or remission. He has come to accept that as a fact of life that can’t be helped at the moment or in the foreseeable future, like, lets say the next twenty to thirty years, yet he wishes it could. He would like to be able to leave her room without the menace of never being in her bed again clutching his guts. Like it would be nice to be able to have casual sex again without feeling like he is digging his own emotional grave with every lingering caress.

Mike would also love to hold her and please her till the end of time like in a fucking Bon Jovi ballad, so yes, maybe someone should lobotomize him and end with his suffering.

He changes clothes, takes his car and drives to her.

This too, can’t be helped, as it seems.

She opens the door in just a tank top and boyshorts, her hair spilling everywhere looking like a sport illustrated cover in all her glory.

“Troy Hirsch thinks I’m doing just fine,” she says as he takes off his jacket.

“Troy Hirsch has a soft spot for you.”

She snorts, rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest while he goes to sit on the small coach without waiting for an invitation. They are probably far, far, far beyond.

Ginny follows him and contemplates him for a couple of long seconds as if deciding if he is worth her while before making up her mind and sitting on his lap. She does it like is nothing, a common occurrence in the middle of any conversation.

“My catcher thinks I’m doing just fine.” She puts her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs grazing lazily the sides of his neck.

“Livan has a soft spot for you too.”

He puts his hands on her naked knees, drags them up all the way to her ass and squeezes, watching her mouth the whole time until she bites into her lower lip like he expected. He is not ashamed to admit that he is a little smug about being right in his prediction, it vindicates him somehow, like having all the right answers in a surprise test.

“Funny you say that.” She moves closer and onto his crotch. Their stomachs softly colliding with every breathing. “I’ve been playing baseball my whole life and I can’t remember many people having _soft spots_ for me.”

Her right hand slowly goes to his nape. The callous, slender fingers, caress the sensitive skin there making him shiver and she smiles knowingly.

“Some of us hide it pretty well.”

His thumbs hook in the elastic of her shorts, play soft lazy circles on the skin they find there.

“Really?” her voice is sweetly fake, asking for trouble.” Do you have a soft spot for me?”

She rotates her hips, knowing exactly what she is doing.

“Please, don’t make me say the very bad pun about the very hard _spot_ I have for you.”

She chuckles, smiling broadly with dimples and everything. He wants to tickle her for days just to hear her laugh forever, sink his nose under her ear and live in that smell. He wants to cook her her favourite meals and watch her while she eats them and spend a whole day in bed watching bad tv and talking in whispers while outside rains.

He kisses her, taking his sweet time in really tasting her lips, her tongue, exploring her mouth at leisure but she is uncontainable. Like trying to hold water with bare hands. He roams his lips over her shoulder, nuzzles her neck as they slowly undress each other and drop from the coach to the floor.

“You really don’t like furniture, uh?”

He runs his mouth down her stomach, her knee over his shoulder as he grazes his teeth along the juncture of her leg with her hip.

“You are too stupidly big for my furniture,” she says breathlessly, her fingers entangled in his hair as he drags his mouths towards her core. 

Mike takes his time there. He licks his way around, broadly, alert at her reactions to what he does. He sucks, slow and consistently until she is panting and grabbing his hair like a lifeline, then changes angles, plays with his lips and his beard on her delicate skin and starts to work her out again.

“Mike. Mike, please.”

He doesn’t yield. He adds his fingers to the mix, uses his tongue, fat and flat and soft over her clit while his hand plays at her entrance and he has to use his other hand to steady her hips. Her thighs begin to tremble with tension and Mike intensifies his onslaught, flexing his fingers inside her, adding just the tiniest bit of teeth.

He want’s to make her feel as helplessly out of control as he feel every time she looks at him and gravity zero sets in the pit of his stomach. He want’s to make her so far gone that she is only grounded to reality by his fingers and his mouth.

“Am I being too hard on you, Baker?” he growls against her labia, her back arching in a way he considers it makes her eligible for Cirque du Soleil.

“Fuck,” she whimpers, her whole body starting to tense up and Mike tries to put in contact his naked skin with as much of her naked skin as possible.

Like trying to hold water with bare hands.

 

**52 days**

“It was the Network’s idea,” he says as soon as she opens the door.

Mike can see the surprise in her face and the big, wide smile as she puts a hand over her mouth trying to hide her obvious mirth.

He drags his own calloused hand over his new shaven jaw, still unused to the feeling of his own smooth face. 

“Apparently beards don’t appeal to the majority of the 18 to 49 target audience.”

He invites himself in as she keeps looking at him as if he had grown a second head out of his neck and goes to the minibar in search of a cold beer. 

The truth is that it has been easier to cut her facial hair off than he would have previously thought. That was a baseball beard, grown mostly for the need to command some respect as a captain when he looked entirely too young to do so. He is no longer a player and sometimes when he gets up early in the morning, his knees cracking and his muscles dreading the hard work out to come, he looks at himself in the mirror and forgets for a moment that baseball is no longer first and foremost in his life.

“Oh. My. God.”

He takes a long swing of the beer, gulping down the sudden wave of self consciousness along with the drink. Walks a couple of long steps towards the window with the panoramic view of the Petco Park and tries to convince himself that he doesn’t miss it as much as he thought he would.

Ginny materializes by his side soon enough, the darkness from outside making her reflection on the glass sharp and clear. He can see her wide, brown eyes looking at him with open amusement. It would be less problematic if he could find her annoying sometimes instead of completely charming, he is always a moderate dose of alcohol away from pouring his heart out with a grandiloquent discourse like in a regency novel here, I-am-half-hope-half-agony shit.

“You look like a baby!” she says in awe, her fingers go to softly stroke his face and he makes an effort to not look like a puppy being pet and rolls his eyes.

“What are you talking about? I am ancient, like the continents. I have the wrinkles to prove it.”

Ginny laughs and closes the distance between their faces until they are only a few inches apart. She seems to be studying his features as if it was the first time she saw him.

“No, you don’t.” She kisses him with her fingers still roaming over his naked cheeks. “This is weird.”

“Eighty two percent of women from eighteen to forty nine think is hot,”

“Who am I to contradict them then?”

She goes on tiptoes and kisses the sharp end of his jaw, drags her lips all the way to his lips. This sweet, soft attention makes him shiver, fills his lungs with air and pride. He puts a hand on her hip as the other still holds the beer.

“Seriously, this is ridiculous. How old are you?” She says laughing, her fingers still tracing the lines of his face as if trying to find the trick to the illusion. “You look like I could get in trouble for letting you drink beer.”

“Very funny.”

He moves the hand on her hip to the small of her back and forces her to walk backwards, imposing his own body on hers. He can feel the warmth of her skin through the layer of her sports clothes and his jeans and as soon as and horizontal surface is within his reach he leaves the unfinished beer and uses his other hand to tangle his cool fingers in her untidy hair.

“I’m old enough to teach you a lesson or two.”

She laughs, nips along the column of his throat until he groans and she leans back enough to look at him in the eye.

“I feel like I’m corrupting a minor. Does your mother let you stay up this late?” she mocks him.

“Fuck you.”

With a swift movement he pulls her up throwing half her body over his left shoulder while she laughs and squeals loudly, his right hand free to smack her ass appropriately as he marches on towards the bed.

He is trying to prove a point, not really sure which one, but he lets her drop on the mattress and all of her bounces. She looks terribly young as she giggles. Terribly. Younger than Mike has ever been, even. It is another weight on his shoulders that pulverize his knees, how not young he is, how disastrously inappropriate he is for her.

Shit.

He would like to lay beside her and ask her if she would love him if he were younger, if his name wasn’t tied to professional baseball, if he were free to wander around her and openly and loudly cheer for her at every game. He would like to look her in the eye and hear her answer in quiet whispers over his skin.

Ginny gets on his knees near the end of the bed and puts her warm hands over his face once again. He hides his scars and wrinkles in the darkness of the room but she traces them with the pads of her fingertips, knowing them by heart, maybe.

“You look like you did when you were a rookie.”

Mike convinces himself he doesn’t sound at all heartbroken when he answers.

“You do too.”

 

**76 days**

Mike is not jealous because he doesn't do jealous. He never has. But he does envious and he most certainly does pissed off.

Oh yes. He is royally pissed off.

Phoenix pisses him off.

The hotel bedroom is completely dark and smells like synthesized apple candy. The door closes with a thud after they get in and he doesn’t waste any time to pin her urgently and un-gently against the nearest wall. He uses his hands to figure out the position of her face and her mouth before kissing her as hard and dirty as he has ever kissed anyone before. 

Ginny groans, loudly and hooks her leg around his hips, grasps his neck with a level of coordination that only serves to madden him furtherly.

He wants her trembling and incoherent with desire for him. He wants her mercilessly undone.

Mike growls against the sensitive spot of her neck that always makes her gasp, below her left ear, and grasps her ass under the skirt of her dress, lifting her up from the floor. Her fancy shoes fall unceremoniously off her feet as she crosses them by the ankles behind his lower back.

Attending this charity gala has been a dumb thing to do after finding out that she was going to be there too, yet, he figured it took a very special kind of asshole to stop contributing to a cause just because he sucked at compartmentalize.

“God, Mike.”

She sounds breathless but not breathless enough for his liking.

“I'm gonna make you come harder than you have ever come before,” he says, bites softly her earlobe. It’s a as much a threat as it is a promise.

She whimpers and strengthens the grip of her legs, her tight taut and tense entrapping him as her hips buck helplessly against his and yes, this is more like it. 

There is a time and a place for slow and sweet and it certainly is not now and not in fucking Phoenix. Mike palms her, searches with his left hand the string of her thong and follows the edge of the ridiculously small piece of cloth until he finds what he is really looking for; her. Hot and so wet that when he effortlessly pushes his finger inside her the sound it makes is squishy and blatant pornographic.

They hadn't been seated at the same table and he is not sure if that would have been better or worse. They have not been seated even _near_ each other but four tables apart, a bunch of distinguished dinner guests between them with restricted visibility thanks to a giant column added for good measure. As it turns out he had spent an indecent amount of money to have dinner and make polite conversation with his ex-wife, her new husband and a couple of other “television people” he couldn't care less about.

Fuck fucking Phoenix. 

“I’m gonna make you come so hard that the whole hotel is gonna know,” he says.

Ginny tries to get him to move but he uses the bulk of her body to make stop her hips and her frustrated cry is almost enough to suck the air out of his lungs. Mike uses his thumb, rough and soaked in her fluids to brush hard around her clit but never really grazing it, flexing his index and forefingers inside her in sync until she pants hard enough that it could probably be heard from the outside hallway.

He covers her open mouth with his own, his tongue licking her teeth and the roof of her mouth.

“Mike, Mike, Mike,” she pants against his lips.

She is close. He knows she can come fast and messy when prompted, if he talks dirty to her, so Mike withdraws the hand that was working between her legs before she is gone and the way she puffs disappointedly is almost comical.

“I'm gonna kill you,” she almost shouts, very, very frustrated as his fingers play with the skin of her inner thighs.

Her breathing is agitated and his other hand grabs her breast over her clothes, brushes hard his fingers over her hard nipple as his hips keep her pinned and in place.

“We will see about that.”

He nibbles on her lips, his hand retracing its previous path. He puts aside her underwear with one finger and uses two fingers to tease her, slowly tracing her seam. She is so wet that it's going to stain the front of his suit pants.

Good.

He wants to give her the stronger orgasm of her whole, young live so that she won't ever come again without the memory of his fingers inside her plaguing her mind. He pushes his two fingers inside her and curls them as he bites the tendon of her shoulder. Ginny’s hands seems to be everywhere at once, trying to grasp him, his arms, his neck, his back. She sinks her nose in the crook of his neck and takes a deep breathe as if trying to inhale him somehow. He has no other choice than to start playing slow circles with his thumb over her clit to balance the scale in his favor again.

“Fuck, “she murmurs, and then louder, “fuck.”

“Now you kind of wish you have bidded for me, don't you?”

The stupid bachelor's auction had been the worst part of the whole disastrous evening. He hadn't realize how much he had wanted for her to take him on an actual date, without secrets and hotel rooms involved, until Britney Spears had won the damn thing.

Ginny hadn't raised her pad, not even once for shits and giggles.

He is drowning, suffocating inside of his suit, endlessly falling and hitting all the rocks in his way down. He concentrates as hard as he is able to on ignoring the throbbing erection that demands attention inside his pants. He has more urgent matters to attend to, something to do with vindication and retaliation and make Ginny come.

His heart feels like bursting, unable to keep containing his feelings for her and he just wants his pound of flesh in return, a little bit of something that tells him that she is burning here too in her own cosmically lesser scale.

“I couldn't,” she says, her voice trembling.

Yeah, she can throw a ball fast and hard enough to break bones but lifting a pad? No, that she can’t do. Even freaking Blip had bidded for him twice that night.

“Too expensive?” he asks mockingly, his fingers thrusting into her now, the pad of his thumb pressing hard her abused clit and then releasing and caressing.

He stops his ministrations again, abruptly, and he throws her head back hitting the wall and growling at him.

“Too immoral,” she says annoyed. “I'm not going to pay for you to fuck me, Mike.” 

Of course. Apparently any other kind of dates is so out of the question that it doesn't even cross her mind that the intend could have been an innocent, nice dinner in a quiet restaurant with china plates and everything. 

He is hurt, and so, so pissed off that he kisses her, slow, sloppy. He has officially lost his fucking mind altogether.

“I’m supposed to fuck Britney then?” he says bucking his hips, throwing his erection against her as part of his argument.

Britney is great. A sweet, funny woman that will bring her sons to the dinner date because they are huge baseball fans. Britney is lovely, she is just not what Mike wants.

“No,” she answers too quickly and he is almost appeased. 

He kisses her again, less angered but still trying to prove a point with every stroke of their tongues. He bucks his hips against her again.

“Maybe we should move to the bed.”

Ginny shakes her head no, vehemently, he can’t see her clearly but feels the movement, her hair brushing against the sides of his head. She takes a gulp of air and lowers her trembling hands to start to work the button of his pants.

“Ginny?”

Her breathing is erratic. She opens the button and unzips his fly, sneaks her hand to find him under his boxers, hard, so hard. He can help the twitch of his cock when he feels her fingers around him, guiding him out of his underwear and to her.

“It’s okay.”

No it’s not okay. There is nothing about fully clothed, unprotected sex against an hotel room’s wall that sounds remotely okay, except… God.

“Ginny,” this time it is a warning.

“What.” She is irritated at his reluctance, as if their apparent lack of dating life and the constant medical check outs as elite athletes over the years is excuse enough to be careless. The pill is not infallible, right? He has read that somewhere. “I thought you’d be into it.”

It’s an accusation if he have ever heard one. The implication that there is something wrong with him for not jumping immediately into the chance of disregarding a condom makes him outraged.

Fine. Whatever. If this is what she wants this is what she is going to get. 

He holds her with one spread hand, half under her upper thigh half under her ass cheek, as he bats her hands away with the other. His back is going to hurt like hell in the morning. In a movement that only the most skilled of professional could presume to master, he manages to put aside the damped piece of cloth of her underwear and align himself to her with just one hand.

He gets inside her in one sharp thrust that makes their pubic bones collide and a bubbly laugh mixed with a pointed gasp raises from deep within her, making her all vibrant and unstable in his arms.

“Oh God. I’ve never– shit!”

Yeah. Shit.

She is so hot and wet around him that... fuck, he has to concentrate hard to not embarrass himself but he can’t see anything and that makes the sound of their bodies louder, the smell of sex stronger.

He feels like he is going to explode but he had a point to prove, although for the life of him he can’t remember what it was about.

Ginny tightens the hold of her legs around his waist trying to gain some leverage to meet his thrusts, panting hard and quickly as her hands grab fists of his shirt trying to pull him closer, but there is no room for closer, their chest are plastered together.

Mike needs to feel her skin. There is too many clothes between them as he sinks bare into her and the dichotomy is driving him nuts. He wants to feel her everywhere. All the time. Forever.

He nuzzles her right temple and his lungs fill with her smell. The words are at the tip of his lips. _I Love you, I love you, God I love you,_ so he busies his mouth with the skin of her neck in an open kiss that is much more tongue than lips. Her taste is salty and familiar, like home. His hips charge against hers and it also feels like fucking home.

He bites at her pulse point, sucks hard, knowing well that it will leave a mark but not caring nearly enough and her whimper is so loud that half the floor must have heard her. She contracts around him, once, her breathing so fast he is mildly concern she could pass out.

Mike kisses her, licks hard the roof of her mouth as he enters her again and she starts to break in his arms.

“Look at me,” he demands. There is just light enough for silhouettes but whatever.

She does. He knows she does, she can imagine her half closed lids, her eyes black, all pupils, like a cat in the dark. She comes hard and he can hear it, he can see it, he can feel it around his cock and that is what finally undoes him and makes him come right after her.

His hips lose the rhythm as he thrust into her once, twice, thrice more until his muscles tense and then give up. His tired legs no longer able to hold their combined weight and they slide down the wall until they are awkwardly resting on the floor, a mass of limbs and sweat and fucking stupid clothes, panting against each other, trying to regain their normal breathing before moving.

“I could stay,” he says out of nowhere. 

Gods, he wants to stay. Wants to pull the zipper of her dress down and lay together on the bed, naked and entangled, and whisper nonsenses and argue about baseball.

“You never stay.”

No. No, of course he doesn’t. That is a apparently privilege reserved for other people. For other kind of relationship, probably.

He nods.

“Right.”

He gets on his feet and offers her his hand to pull her up. She goes to the bathroom to clean herself up and Mike doesn’t wait for her to come out again. He makes himself as presentable as possible and heads out without another word because his heart is bursting and breaking and somehow he would like to spare Ginny the pity party.

The fluorescent light of the hotel hallway is too bright for his eyes, and he blinks away the uncomfortable headache that is forming behind his lids. He drags his feet over the fancy rug with hands in the pockets of his trousers and his head low trying to avoid the unforgiving brightness.

“Yo, Lawson, do you have some spare change? Evelyn is craving some chocolate.”

Mike lifts his head to find Blip by the vending machine room, just beside the elevators and wills his face not to give up anything.

“I don’t think so,” he sounds funny even to his own ears so he tries to keep on walking but Blip lifts a pointy finger and makes a face.

“I thought your room wasn’t on this floor.”

Mike doesn’t say anything. Mike barely ever says anything anymore, not that it matters because the other man makes a point of very slowly give him a look from head to toes. Mike guesses it would be too much to ask for Blip to not noticing his rumpled clothes and overall disheveled appearance. Blip looks behind him, at the general direction of Ginny’s room and he can see the exact moment the pieces click together inside his friend’s brain.

“Shiiiiiiit.”

Well Mike can’t say he argues with that. He just wants to get to his room, take a shower and probably drink all the alcohol that his minibar can provide.

“Yeah, well. I’m gonna… keep going.”

He makes it as far as taking too full steps before Blips stops him again.

“Mike? Are you okay? You look like a truck just drove you over”

Yep, that sounds like an accurate description of how he feels.

Mike takes a deep breath and looks at his friend for a moment, letting his façade fall just for an instant and Blip nods, his face death serious and solemn before nodding again meaningful. Mike doesn’t know what kind of arrangement has the both of them just agreed to but he keeps walking towards the elevators without uttering another another word, feeling like he can’t breath until the doors of the car open to let him in.

**92 days**

The phone rings at something past three in the morning and he doesn’t even bother with actual clothes, just some workout short and a hoodie he had lying around. He picks up his car keys and doesn’t really bother with traffic lights either, the sound of her small, suffocated voice too present in his brain to try to be sensible, his heart stammers in his ears.

When she opens the door her eyes are red and puffy and she still doesn’t seem able to catch her breath. She looks exhausted, on the verge of drowning in imaginary water and it scares the shit out of Mike.

“It’s okay.” He puts his arms loosely around her, not having any idea if that actually helps with a panic attack or not. “It’s okay I got you.”

She grabs a handful of his clothes with both hands, her breathing still laboured and far too quickly as she leans her forefront on his shoulder. He rubs his hands soothingly up and down her spine, whispers nonsense in her ear as he rocks them both very, very slowly.

“Just try to breathe with me.”

He takes deep, slow intakes of air and releases it loudly for her to follow his lead. After a few minutes he takes the chance to walk them both towards the coach, he practically carrying her, and Ginny sits, pulling her knees towards herself as if making herself occupy as little space in the world as possible. It’s a little disturbing for him because in his mind she is a giant, bigger than most things, like a fucking new continent. Like a galaxy.

He puts his arm over her shoulders as they both sit quietly in the dimn illuminated room. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself. 

She was right, he is too big for the stupid hotel furniture.

“I’m sorry” she says after what feels like years. Her voice is still a little strained but far more in control than when she called him. “Amelia is in Tokio closing a deal and–”

“You can call me whenever, Ginny.”

Which is true. God is so true. She could call him to help her hide a body and he won’t even question himself on the way over.

She nods once but doesn’t look convinced and they remain in silence for quite some time, just one alongside the other in the almost dark room, breathing. His mind wanders, filling with hopes and possibilities which is terrible because he has to keep reminding himself that this is not the kind of moment he can allow himself to enjoy in any capacity.

He is a jerk. An asshole and a fucking jerk, but not enough not to remember to put aside his stupid feelings and focus on her, you know, the one with the fucking breathing’s trouble thing.

“Is everything okay, Rookie?” it has been ages since he has called her that. Ages since the term was accurate. “Is the new pitcher giving you hell?”

She sighs and she sounds so, so exhausted with only that little gesture. “Yes. But it’s not–” she interrupts herself. “It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“I think is just accumulated stress or something,” she says dismissively.

Amelia said something about a network wanting to make a tv mini-series based on her life, her mother spend last week in town, visiting, and she mentioned in passing that his brother’s new infallible business wasn’t doing so great. Again.

And those are just the things he can think about from the top of his head. 

He nods and takes a lock of her hair between his fingers with the excuse to putting it back behind her ear.

“Anything I can help you with?”

She shakes her head no but doesn’t look at him She just leans her forehead on her knees and sighs like the whole weight of the world was still over her shoulders, crushing her down. He puts his hand on her nape just meaning it as a comforting gesture but she sighs again, this time as if she were making an effort to contain herself.

“Ginny?”

“I miss you.”

The words are barely audible, rushed out like an exhalation but he hears them. God yes, he hears them, and they are like a cold shower and a warm bath in quick succession. This is what he imagines re-starting your heart with an electric shock might feel like.

“I’m right here.”

“Now.”

He rubs her nape, his thumb caressing the side of her neck, warm, soft and familiar. He wants her to look at him, he can’t read her like this. “Ey, I–”

“I got used to have you around, okay?” She is a little passive aggressive but she finally lifts her head if only to look at the far end of the room. “I got used to your shitty pep talks and your misguided sense of humor. I… miss you.”

He is not sure what kind of declaration is that, what does it entail, to where does it extends. He has already burned out enough as it is, he is not going to make any assumption.

“I can give you a shitty pep talk right now if you want.”

Ginny finally, _finally_ looks at him but there is not a trace of humor in her eyes, they are sad and serious and resigned. She looks like she is ready to give up the fight and Mike doesn’t even know what battle she is walking away from or if he had any part in it at all.

“No. I’ll be alright.”

 

**104 days**

Ginny stops calling him. 

He is not talking solely about the booty calls, or the flirty, nonsensical conversations that sometimes toed the line of phone sex. She just cuts all communications altogether; no check-in calls, no arguing over game strategy calls, no commenting on the latests with the Evans calls. Nothing, and Mike has a hard time trying to figure out if he is more frustrated, hurt or confused about the whole radio-silent situation. 

He tries to phone her, of course, but the escarce times when she actually dignifies to acknowledge him by answering the call, her conversation is hurried and curt so he takes the hint and tries a last resort strategy. 

He uses the sign of the new merchandising contracts as an excuse to wander around the clubhouse first time in the morning, at a time when it is guaranteed to be mostly empty and convinces himself that he is only there to clear the air, cross the t, dot the i. Than kind of thing.

“Who has let the press in?” Butch jokes when they meet in the hallway on his way to the gym. Mike is a little surprised at how satisfying the shoulder pats and the sincerely meant hug from his former teammate feels.

“Don’t be coy now, Butch, I’ve already seen you naked. More times than any of us care to count.”

“Yeah, yeah. We miss your ugly face too Lawson,” he says with a snort. “Go say hi to our girl or he will kick your ass.”

Mike makes a dismissing gesture with his hand, as if this hadn’t been his intention all along and keeps walking towards the gym. She is working the ropes when he enters and she barely looks at him before proceeding to ignore him blatantly, her face not even flinching the tiniest bit.

“Okay, let’s cut all the introductory crap in which I ask you what is going on and you feign you don’t know what am I talking about.”

She takes a deep breath and lets go of the ropes putting her hands on her hips.

“Geez Lawson, what do you want from me?”

She asks it as if he were making an unreasonable request, as if he were the one forcing her hand or something. The truth is that what he wants is permanently on hold and dependent on what she is willing to give him.

“What about an excuse or an explanation for starters?”

He crosses his own arms over his chest and readies himself for battle, lifting invisible walls around him, waiting for her words and the unavoidable pain that they will probably bring him.

“For what, exactly?”

“For what? What about the dozen of unreturned missed calls?”

She throws her head back looking at the ceiling, her shoulders slumping dramatically. She looks defeated, beaten, a little bit humiliated even.

“Seriously, Lawson. What do you want from me?”

He realizes then and there that they are not talking the same language here, they can’t be talking the same language because she is speaking as if he had hurt her somehow and he has not a fucking clue how that could have come to be. It is emotionally suicidal but he decides to sit on the bench and cut all the crap out.

“Why did you stop calling, Ginny?”

“Why did you never called?”

He is dumbstruck at her question, at her accusation. She seems aggravated by the fact that he left her decide the terms of their encounters and the air leaves his lungs and his heart skips a beat because surely she can’t be implying what he thinks she might be implying.

“Ginny–”

“It’s alright. I mean I just–” she interrupts herself taking another deep, deep breath. “It’s okay.”

It really, really, really is not okay.

“It doesn’t sound okay.”

Ginny looks around as if expecting an interruption until her eyes set on the treadmill and she starts to move towards it, which would probably end the conversation.

“It is okay, just give me a little time, alright? and everything will be back as it was a year ago. Being just palls and that stuff.”

Mike gets up and hurries to get himself in between her and the stupid treadmill. “Give you a little time for what?”

He is at the verge of a stroke, or a heartbreak. It’s fight or fly, or maybe a little of both.

She looks embarrassed, but he can’t tell if the coloring of her cheeks is due to that or a consequence of the workout. She looks at her feet and tries to turn around but he stops her with a hand on her arm.

“Ginny? A little time for what?”

“I said I missed you and you cracked a joke. I can take a hint.”

Yeah. No. What?!

He grins stupidly which might not be the best reaction but he can’t help it. 

Ginny squares her jaw and his whole face hardens. “It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not.” He can’t stop grinning, thought. Mike puts his other hand on her other arm and pulls her a step closer. “Just to clarify, you thought that I wasn’t interested or invested enough?”

“You. Cracked. A joke.”

“Because you were having a rough time and I wanted to lighten the mood! I wasn’t being dismissive.”

She looks uncertain, like she wants to believe him but she doesn’t and Mike would wrap her up with his body, cook her breakfast and listen to her sing off key until she believes him if that is what it takes. It won’t be a hard feat. Like at all.

“Oh. Well, anyway,” she says, her voice fading, unconvinced.

“I never called because I am ancient. I am an actual walking fossil, Ginny, and I have years ahead of you, so I don’t miss the frat parties or the sex without strings or whatever that it is that the crazy youngsters are now about.”

“Crazy youngsters? really?”

“The point is that maybe you do.” 

He runs his hands up and down her arms, conciliatory, and she seems to relax into his touch. Her eyes are little bright and her gaze intense. He would like to kiss her, soft and sweet on the lips but even though he is not her captain anymore this is still her workplace.  
“And then there is baseball,” he says with a sigh. “Which _I know_ is hard and demanding, but is no longer my life, so you call the shots here, Rookie. You always have.”

She nods. “Okay, so you were kind of distant and shit while we were… doing whatever it was that we were doing because of parties and baseball?”

It sounds far worse when she summarizes it.

“Yeah, that and I was also scared shitless because I’m a little in love with you.”

She gasps, her eyes tearing up a little but her hands go to his cheeks, stroking lightly his skin with the pads of her fingers as if he were precious to her. “You are a cheeseball,” she says, her voice breaking.

Mike looks up at the door of the gym, his heart stomping in his chest, he leans on and kisses her, soft, chaste, pouring everything he has in it and not giving a damn about they being found out.

His heart grows three sizes when she kisses him back.

It is one of the best kisses of his life.


End file.
